HydroQuest
UX Designer, Oct 2024 (3 weeks)
Background
My client, Laero, is a design studio that created a water treatment device called Cycleau; a safe, affordable device that recycles greywater in buildings to make it potable. Their goal was to share this product with people in water-scarce communities, but households were hesitant to adopt the new technology. To build trust with these communities, Laero connected with my team to design an e-learning platform that could be shared with middle school students at local schools in the area to raise awareness.
Diving into Research
Objective:
Understand what leads to a productive learning environment for middle school students and what contributes to challenges and boredom.
Teacher Interviews
To help frame the types of questions we would explore students in our user research, we interviewed 3 middle school teachers about their experiences facilitating positive learning environments.
Student Interviews
I wrote interview scripts and created survey questions to gather insights from 11 middle school students.
3.9 / 5
importance of being able to connect classroom material to the real world
73%
prefer learning through games
100%
are motivated by a sense of achievement and progress
Our Persona, Jose
I synthesized our user research to create a persona that represented the key insights we identified. Jose grounded our team and helped us empathize with the needs and behaviors of middle school students.
Meaningful learning: Wants to see real-life application of classroom material.
Engagement: Gains energy and focus when playing learning games or interactive activities.
Achievement: Cares about seeing progress he’s making in his learning.
Information Overload: Struggles to focus when teachers talk for a long time.
Lack of support: Fears not having someone he can ask for help when he feels stuck.
Lack of context: Loses interest when material feels too abstract or unrelated to his life.
Modular Design
Lesson Wireframes
My team ideated on several learning module designs that would meet our persona's needs for meaning, engagement, and achievement and converged on the sample lesson structure below.
1) Video (including transcript) to frame the objective of the course.
2) Clickable image that reveals text explaining relevant portions.
3) Open ended quiz intended to encourage students to think about new ideas.
4) Geography game that applies the material to the an aspect of the user's life.
5) Reflection activity that helps users digest what they've learned.
6) Textbook page pops up when selecting the book icon to facilitate optional deeper learning.
Impact
System Usability Scale score
We ran 3 usability tests with middle school users who all said they would be excited to use this website in class and found it easy to navigate. They particularly liked the quiz because they enjoyed trying to come up with an answer themselves.
Handoff
In addition to delivering the designs for the modules themselves, I wrote accompanying documentation explaining the rationale behind design system elements we picked and how features tied back to research.
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