SI 582: Introduction to Interaction Design

Role: UX Designer and Researcher

Duration: September ~ December 2019, 3 months

Course Staff: Tawanna Dillahunt, Aarti Israni

Skills: Brainstorming, Sketching, Critical Thinking, Competitive Analysis, User Interview, Persona, Storyboard, Wireframe, QOC Analysis, Paper Prototype, Usability Test, Digital Prototype, Sketch, InVision

Catalog

• Problem Statement

• Target Audience

• Goal

• Lome. Overview

• Design Process

• What was left unimplemented?

• Social Impact

• Reflection

From my personal experience, I realized that the language barrier was a big problem for international students. It limits students' ability to communicate effectively with peers and professors. Therefore, not helping them to connect to people and sometimes make them isolated.

International students who recently came to the University of Michigan to study, who don’t understand the culture in the U.S.

To help international students to find events or groups around them in which they are interested in participating and practice English with native speakers.

• Discover Problem

• Brainstorming

• Sketches

• Storyboard

• User Interview

• Persona

• Participatory Design

• Survey and Questions Options Criteria Analysis

• Features and Wireframes

• Design Flow

• Paper Prototype

• Usability testing

• Digital Prototype

From my personal experience, I had struggled with English when I first came to the United States.

Furthermore, studies show that many international students have struggled with language barriers.

In the study conducted over 300 international students in United Kingdom, Bukhari found that 45% international student said their overall education and grades were affected by the language barriers.

In a recent study conducted among 900 international students in Australia, Russell et al. found that 41% of international students experience substantial levels of stress that came from academic pressures and language difficulties.

From my personal experience and background research, I found three ways that can help solve the language barrier for international students.

Learn the Culture

Find Social Group

Use Translate Technology

Storyboard: Find Social Group

Storyboard: Use Translate Technology

I conducted user interviews with 4 international students and 1 English Language Institute Lecturer. I also conducted 1 observation with the ELI workshop.

Key findings from the interviews:

• People want to practice with native speakers instead of international students.

• People feel uncomfortable talking to people, so they try to avoid conversation.

• People don’t go to ELI because they don’t have time and think it is not helpful.

• People want more lifestyle English, instead of academic.

Based on the user interviews, I created 4 personas that reflect on my findings.

I understand that when creating personas, it should not be the representation of a single user. It should be the representation of certain numbers of users. That's exactly what I did, I summarized all my user interviews and found the common needs from my user to create 4 personas.

I sent out a survey and got 37 responses, and from the feedback form QOC analysis.

The survey helped me to understand my target audience and their problems better. From the result that I got back; I was able to decide which direction to go.

QOC analysis helped and supported me in narrowing down my design ideas into my final design. It helped me to communicate my design decisions, allowed me to visualize the consequences would be, and helped me to decide what is the best way. QOC is a method that helped me to compare which decision would be better and further developed that idea.

QOC analysis helped me to figure out what features to implement into my application.  I was able to sketch out the wireframes to lay out the content and the functionality of my application. 

Select Themes

Profile of People

Location

I conducted two usability testings with my paper prototype with my target audience. Two international students. Usability testing helps me to understand what are some usability issues when the users are using my application. It also helps me to fix the problems that I didn’t realize when I first design the interface.

Below were some changes that I made according to my usability tests.

I made my introducing home page to have a button "Let's go" so that the users can remove the welcoming message.

I added event information such as who is the organizer and the people who are attending on the event pop-up tab.

I changed my events page so that in each event, it can show event information, time, organizer, and attendance.

I added the message function so that the users can message the organizer if they want or anyone they wish to message.  

This mobile application's main target audiences are international students who recently came to the United States. However, there is another main stakeholder to consider, which is the native speakers (classmates for international students). This is something that I haven't implemented yet.

Since the main target audiences are the international students who recently came to the United States, I dedicated much of the time researching on international students. As I research more, I realized that the stakeholders are not only international students but also native speakers. However, if I want to consider native speakers as my target audience as well, the project scope and direction would be totally different.

As I conduct more user interviews, I concluded that native speakers should be the secondary stakeholders. Therefore, I spend much of my time designing this mobile application for international students. However, if given more time, I will like to research and design another application for native speakers to help international students.

I believe that my design can help international students who recently came to the University of Michigan to study to be more confident and comfortable to attend events and meet people that are willing to help them practice English. Getting help from peers and encourage inclusion within the community. My goal for this application is to make international students feel included and welcomed to the community that there are unfamiliar with. If this application thrived, I hope to bring unity into the communities within the University environment and provide a comfortable environment for international students to flourish their academic life.

As a designer, I’m interested in problems that people are facing each day. I want to help to solve the problem and make people’s lives easier. I want to tackle the problem that I have encountered before, which is language barriers.

In this project, my design philosophies are: to make the users feel familiar, not a lot of learning curve, easy and intuitive to use, instinctive with seamless user experience, and have strong data to support design decisions.

With these design philosophies in mind, I designed this mobile application that can help 1500 incoming international students to find events that they are interested in and practice English with native speakers. I followed my design philosophies, to make the users feel familiarize, not a lot of learning curve, easy and intuitive to use, and instinctive with seamless user experience, by referencing Google Maps and Facebook events pages. It is because many international students have used both Google Maps and Facebook, and the interface is very familiar to them.  Therefore, they don’t have to learn how to use this application. In my design philosophies, I said that I want to have strong data to support design decisions, I achieved that by always using user interview and survey form to ask for my users to help solve my challenges.

In this application, I intended to incorporate the value of collaboration into my application. I intend to let international students get help from their peers and, at the same time, encourage inclusion within the community. With the communities at the University of Michigan, I believe that this environment can help Lome to achieve its potential.