Discipline
UX Research, UI/UX Design
Timeline
September 2020 - December 2020
Tools
UX Research Methodologies, Affinity Mapping, Ideation, Prototyping, Figma, User Testing
Role
Product Design Consultant, Synthesis Lead
Team
Sachi Kulkarni (Mentor), Kamya Venkatesan, Nerissa Hsieh, Dylan Lew
Overview
In the age of Covid-19, bedrooms have become lecture halls, dining rooms have become libraries, and study sessions are only possible through messaging and video calls. For roughly 8 million college students, the physical environments that students used to rely on are no longer available.
Quizlet is a global learning platform that provides engaging study tools to help people practice and master what they are learning. Without an existing collaborative feature, Quizlet came to Berkeley Innovation with the following prompt:
How might we design more collaborative features within Quizlet to facilitate more creation and/or learning, so that learners collectively can help each other practice and master whatever their learning?
With the understanding that collaboration is a vital component for college studying and considerations for the remote environment in mind, my team at Berkeley Innovation created Quizlet Converse, a collaborative topic and answer study mode that pairs mobile devices and a shared screen.
Through Quizlet Converse, we sought to create a feature that fosters the value of collaboration in both remote and — hopefully soon — in-person environments.
Context
The Quizlet suite has no existing collaborative feature. The main features of Quizlet allow users to study terms and definitions through various methods, all of which are tailored to individual studying. Quizlet does have a feature called “Quizlet Live”, however this feature is designed for in-person classroom experiences, and its focus on speed is irrelevant for older students.
Our Solution:
Core Experiences
Verbal communication is powerful. While our research revealed many factors that contribute to effective studying, the simple act of talking to each other proved to be universally valued. We decided that the best way to create a collaborative feature was to simply enhance an experience students already do in their everyday lives.
Our designs include the left screen which is the mobile device of a participant and the right screen which is the shared screen that all participants would see. For our final prototype, we utilized Quizlet’s existing design system to better unify our feature with the existing product.
Onboarding
Understand the Quizlet Converse process through an onboarding process. Enter in the code for your session to study with your peers.
Addressing Insight #1, the onboarding experience prepares the users to study with others, setting a productive and collaborative tone for the environment.
Queuing Terms
Target specific areas of study. Add existing or new terms to the group queue.
Addressing Insight #2 and Insight #4, the queue experience allows users to curate specific areas of study, ensuring the study session is beneficial for all. Through the shared screen, participants can see the topics that they can help other participants better understand.
Term Prompting & Submission
Test your knowledge for each term. Answer and submit your understanding of the term that appears on the screen. “Star” the term to reference for later review.
Addressing Insight #2 and Insight #4, the term prompting and submission allows users to keep track of their own progress for later individual study, as well as visually see the understanding of other participants.
Post Answering Conversation
Use each other’s submitted answers as a starting point for conversation. Express your understanding to the group through an icon. Leave a comment, noting any new insights from the conversation.
Addressing Insight #3 and Insight #4, the conversation phase serves as the peak of the collaborative process, allowing participants to externalize their individual understandings and actively engage in the material over conversation.
Research
Despite the fact that we ourselves are students attempting to navigate the so-called college experience, we wanted to get a deeper sense of how people really go about studying. The majority of the people we reached have been students their entire lives, so it was fascinating to learn about everyone’s personal science of how to study, some sciences being rigidly exact and others quite loose.
Synthesis
Insight #1: Students find it difficult to create tactile, collaborative behaviors in a remote environment.
“Online collaboration doesn't compare at all to how it would be in person. Collaborating in person gives you a different element: you can understand people more, whereas online, it's really restricted.”
- Matthew M., Freshman at Stanford
Insight #2: Students don’t start with collaboration; individual studying is seen as more efficient.
“I do a good chunk of studying by myself ... I typically like to try to solve problems, at least initially on my own and see if I can understand it.”
- Matthew G., Senior at UC Berkeley
Insight #3: Students value externalizing information verbally.
“When you come together, it’s more about asking each other questions about the little parts of it [the content] you didn’t get or that you want to double check rather than trying to learn it from scratch.”
- Sapna, Junior at the University of Chicago
Insight #4: Students see collaboration as a means to benefit from other’s perspectives.
“Diversity of thought is really important. You wanna feel like you’re one person with two brains, not the opposite.”
- Megan, Senior at UC Berkeley
Ideation
Through our research synthesis, we came up with our refined “how might we” statement which is,
How might we help students efficiently and productively build their knowledge through communicating with Quizlet, so that all users are benefiting from others' perspectives?
There are a slew of existing collaborative platforms, so in ideating, we thought deeply about how we could leverage Quizlet’s unique selling points.
Through explosive ideation sessions, we imagined ideas including a question and answer forum, a collective whiteboard, an accountable buddy system, and more.
At the end of the day, we decided we could not deny our research that argues for the importance of verbal communication. We chose our current model of a live queue question and answer forum because of its capacity to facilitate and foster valuable conversations. Furthermore, the model of a live queue and q&a forum aligned with Quizlet’s existing flashcard feature of a term and answer.
Prototyping
Using Quizlet’s existing design system, we created low-fidelity, mid-fidelity, and 6 different hi-fidelity prototypes before landing at our final concept. I personally worked on the user flow of adding existing and new terms to the live queue.
We completed five different user tests with users, many of whom we had originally interviewed, during the process of iteration. Overall, our user tests demonstrated how Quizlet Converse could enable students to better collaborate as well as more frequently use the Quizlet suite.
These are some changes I made within my flow based on user testing insights:
Checkbox Selection
In the process of choosing a term, I initially decided to create a checkbox to the left of each card. Through user tests, we learned that the checkboxes felt off-putting in the context of the Quizlet suite since it is not seen anywhere else. I changed the checkbox into a symbol within the flashcard, allowing users to simply click the flashcard as a whole, which proved to be a more intuitive interaction.
Creation of zones
Originally, when a user would queue a term, the term would appear on the shared screen, mixed in a crowd of queued terms from other users with no distinction. From user testing, we learned that users want to visually keep track of what they submitted, as well as see where their fellow users needed help, so I created “zones” that delineated each user’s terms.
Impact
Midway through our project, we had the opportunity to present our research and insights at a company-wide lunch and learn session. We were able to actively discuss our work with Quizlet professionals, gaining deeper insight into Quizlet as a company and educational technology as a field.
“Very impressed with this team and your work. Thank you!”
- Matthew Glotzbach, Quizlet CEO
“The team did terrific work. Looking forward to having them come back again after they explore solutions.”
- Vickie Chiang, Senior Director of Design
Wishes
User test with a group
Quizlet Converse, at its core, is about the relationships between people and the serendipity that comes in human interaction. However, due to the constraints of our prototype, we were only able to facilitate user tests that mimicked the interactions of studying with others.
More deeply explore conceptual learning
We found in our research that a significant amount of students simply had no use for Quizlet anymore because their studies necessitated more than memorization. While we ultimately decided that this insight was out of scope for our project, I wish we got to delve deeper into the nuance of university-level learning and how Quizlet could better adapt to the space of conceptual learning.
Reflection
Power in iteration
We went through 6 versions of high-fidelity prototypes before our last. Each time, we were able to find more and more ways to elevate the experience of our product.
Defending and communicating
So much of design is defending and communicating design decisions to your team, to your stakeholders, and to ultimately, to people. This project enabled me to further develop my ability to do so.
As they are
I genuinely believe that design is not about changing people. This project affirmed my belief that design is most powerful when it meets users as they are.
