How to help educator match new students’s faces
Intro
Problem statement
Educators are often faced with a challenge of remembering new students’ name and faces. In the past, teachers have developed their own analogue techniques to do this task, such as name tag, student circle, ice breaker or name game, however, there is still a better way to achieve this goal more efficiently by using the advantage of technology.
Design goal
Help educator get to know their students not only about names but also about attributes and trait much faster and more efficiently.
Scope of design
Design under the assumption that school has a database about student and coursework. So, this app can import useful information.
Target audience
Student and teachers who are not familiar each other.
Situation
New semester in new environment, students and teachers are motivated to get to know each other.
Interview and literature review
Goal: Understand how our brain works in the process of memorizing people’s name & Understand techniques teachers currently use without aid of technology
Remembering name means not only about their name but also about building a relationship as educator get to know students.
Insight #1
What matter is that how to make meaningless name meaningful by matching people’s attributes with name.
Insight #2
Repetitive information recall is essential step to move information from short term memory to long term memory
Insight #3
Teachers have developed their own techniques to remember student name easier, but there is room for improvement by using technology
Reframe the problem
Before starting to find a solution, it’s helpful to reframe the problem based on insights I found from literature review and interview. The following diagrams depicts how we convert a meaningless name to meaningful information.
Reframed problems
- How to help teachers make link between visual/acoustic and semantic information to names.
- How digital can encourage educators recall and relearn students information.
Audience & context
Student
Student
Situation
- Conduct intro session with other students
- Get to know each other such as names and interest
Behavior
- Awkward since they don’t know each other, hard to come up with appropriate conversation subject beside weather
Goal
- Get to know each other, skill share each other
- Get comfortable with the environment
Educator
Student
Situation
- First class of the semester with new student
- Does not familiar with new student’s name and faces
- Many international students who have uncommon names which are hard to remember and pronounce
Behavior
- Conduct their own technique to get to know student
- Keep remind and review student name
Goal
- Build relationship with students, so teacher can customize how to deal with individuals
- Remember student name and faces faster and more efficiently with better accuracy
Initial Idea & brainstorming
Key feature ideas
Tags tied to individual attribute that make easy to remember
Sound interaction for names that are hard to pronounce
Quick quiz for repetitive recall process
Import information from school database
Improved wireframe
Visual design
Key features with scenario
Data import
Jay is a professor This is new semester with new students. He download the app and as he first launches it, the app encourage him to sign up with his school account to pull students’ basic information and course information.
Auto generated Flash card/ grouped by tags
Then the app does two things. First the app will automatically make student’s individual flash card with imported information. Then, generate tags that is used for grouping. It contextually reminds him who he is meeting and who he should remind.
Quick quiz
Jay came back to his desk, and check who he has met today. This repetitive information recall experience help him remember names much faster and more efficiently. The card does not show the name before user tap the screen. User can swipe up if he is sure, swipe down if he is unsure. This determines frequency of card showing.
Search with natural language
Jay happens to meet a student who is familiar but he can’t remember her name in the hallway. He quickly searches with a natural language ‘Asian girl who I met yesterday’. It quickly narrows down students and her now knows she is ‘Julia Wang’. Now, he never forget the name, ‘Julia’
Reflection
What would I do differently if I had more time?
- I would make prototype with these ideas to test this out. Particularly, I want to test landing page design, since I made multiple iteration on single page. Whether the landing page is successful or not can be determined by ratio how much this design encourage educators interact with students’ information.
- My hypothesis was that ‘names are more difficult to remember than other attribute information because of difference in ‘meaningfulness”. That is why I put an effort to make relationship between biographical information and names. I would do interview with actual users to prove if this hypothesis is right.
What to do to make this project go further
- Design sound interaction for accurate name pronunciation recording. How to make solid link between audio and name(text).
- Research and ideation more about how this system can foster relationship both between student-student and student-teacher.
- Expand design scope further to design system to other platforms, not only multiple devices scenario but also integration of school system.