Study Studio

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Summary

For the entirety of the semester long class, our group chose to tackle this prompt:

Design a tool or system that helps students create and manage personalized learning pathways, accounting for different learning styles and paces.

We decided to narrow down the prompt into a problem statement that addressed a specific demographic on the UIUC campus, addressing an issue prevalent among these students.

Once we decided our problem, we were tasked with using the design thinking process to determine a fitting solution according to user needs.

Final Problem Statement

Freshmen struggle with adjusting to academic workload, rigor, and pace while transitioning from high school to college

Final Solution: Canvas Plug-in

The Process

Initial Research

In order to understand the prompt better and to figure out what our problem statement should be, we did an initial deep dive into what learning styles are.

Key takeaways:

1. There are three types of learning styles: kinetic, visual, auditory
2. Different types of learning services at UIUC: disability accommodations, class types (online, hybrid, in person), online learning management systems
3. Types of subjects that need personalized learning (like STEM classes, standardized testing)

From our research, we felt that learning styles can be important in understanding how one studies and can impact their coursework. This can potentially be key when entering college, especially with the onslaught of new types of classes and formats of learning. Therefore, we decided to start by focusing on the demographic of freshmen at UIUC and help them discover what their learning style is apply that accordingly in their classes

User Interviews 1

The intention behind out first round of interviews was to ask students of all grades about the classes they’re currently taking, how they study for them, and whether they’re familiar with learning styles. We created a visual flow of what the interview should look like:

Key takeaways:

1. Class layouts:
• Students preferred different styles of classrooms
• If styles of classrooms didn’t fit the style of learning (lecture, discussion), students feel hindered
2. Learning styles:
• It varied on how familiar students were with learning styles
• Students felt that learning styles were not very relevant to the way they study
3. Study methods:
• Some underclassmen expressed having bad study habits from high school
• Students often took notes in lectures and found practice problems and structured notes helpful

Pivot

Based on these interviews, we found that a focus on learning methods wasn’t a necessarily productive direction for our project. However, we did find that there are pain points among underclassmen regarding study habits. As a result, we decided to pivot from focusing on learning styles to study methods. We felt as though giving students resources to learn how to study according to them will help them more. Now the goal of our project was to address:

Problem: Freshmen struggle with adjusting to academic workload, rigor, and pace while transitioning from high school to college.

How might we assist freshman in adjusting to the college academic workload with new class types and study habits?

User Interviews 2

With a new problem statement, we conducted another round of interviews to gauge how students, upperclassmen and freshmen alike, have adapted to college and their study habits.

We interviewed mainly first semester freshmen on campus with a focus of determining pain points in studying and how their transition from high school to college. We also interviewed upperclassmen to gauge what they wish they knew as freshmen and what kind of good study habits they’ve built.

Key takeaways:

1. Pain points: Overall mainly habit based issues.
• Procrastination & Cramming
• Studying at home
• Distraction
• Additionally it surprised us how many people simply do not study.
2. Delights
• Starting early → related to procrastination
• Motivation and accountability from studying around people
• Combining learning styles

Personas

With our interviews, we were able to create personas for a UIUC freshmen and UIUC senior to understand their motivations and needs:

Lean Experiment

Survey

In order to understand what kind of services and features currently exist and solve user pain points, we created a survey to be sent out to UIUC students. Questions included:

• Multiple select learning platforms that students have used
• What did students use each platform for
• Free response question: What features do you wish were in these online platforms?

Key takeaways:

1. Demographic breakdown: 70 responses and ~ 40 different majors
2. Most popular platforms: Chegg, Quizlet, Khan Academy
3. Desired features:
1. free platforms
2. detailed walkthroughs and explanations
3. live help

Competitor Analysis

With the most popular platforms used by UIUC students determined, we decided to conduct a competitor analysis of these platforms as well as other popular platforms. This was done to gauge pain points and favorable features present in these platforms in order to determine what features should be in our service.

Digital platforms:

In person resources:

Journey Map

With insight from our interviews and personas, we were able to construct a journey map for a student going through the process of preparing for a test. Understanding how a student is feeling and where their pain points are allows us to find opportunities to mitigate those problems

Features

From the culmination of our research, interviews, and lean experiment we narrowed down the list of features to include in our platform.

We also determined the form in which our platform should take. Since UIUC primarily uses Canvas, we deemed it best for our platform to be integrated into the site as a plug in so that it’s easily accessible.

Prototyping

With the format and features of our platform decided, we mocked up web page designs on Figma to demonstrate how the platform would work.

Initial Sketches

Final Prototype: Study Studio