A product that aims to acadmeically engage and challenge highschool students
y-labs
Overview
Goals
Users
My Role
Y-Labs is a company that provides curriculum for high-potential teen innovators and entrepreneurs to be challenged with real world problems and pairs them up with mentors and advisors who are experts in their field.
As a part of Springboard’s program, I was given an internship at Y-Labs to experience the UX industry and be responsible for part of their design process.
For this internship, I was given responsibility over the ‘Dashboard’ and the ‘Profile’ for Y-Lab’s interface. I was tasked to do a competitive analysis and research, sketching, wireframing, high fidelity mockup, user testing, validations and prototyping.
The users will be high school students, aged 13-18, who are from high performing education programs. They are interested in science, math and engineering.
The goal for this internship was to:
Create a dashboard that gives users flexibility and highlights important parts of the program
Create a simple profile that displays the student’s achievements
-Reimagine a dashboard and profile that would engage and encoruage students during virtual learning
Research Findings
How to Encourage Students to Be Successful in Online Learning:
Brainstorm for Dashboard and Profile:
Grow community of learners
Establish high and clear goals
Be inspirational
Give students sense of control
Offer rewards and give praise
Positive competition
Communicate regularly
Adding a rewards and badge system
Displaying charts
Section for inspirational quotes to motivate students
Make the dashboard engaging and modern
Allow students the ability to customize
Have an announcement board as the very first thing students see to allow clear communication
Once I was given the background overview of the users and project, and the deliverables and goals from the client, I did secondary research on what motivates students when they are learning online through psychology and sociology articles. I wanted to understand high school students so that I could design an engaging but encouraging dashboard and profile.
Competive Analysis
I found three learning management platforms and compared their dashboard and profiles:
Canvas
Edmodo
Schoology
They are the #1 learning management platform
Simple but does not display much information
Dashboard:
Only shows assignments with due dates
Displays courses and side panel of tasks, feedback
Allows minimal customization
Profile:
Minimal display of contact, social media and bio
More like social media
Offers features like messenger, quizzes, planner, games, community support
Dashboard:
More content is displayed
User can post a message, show class activity, look at upcoming assignments, add a task, discussions, groups
Classes are color coded
Features like attendance records, online tests, quizzes
Integrates social media and collaboration
Shows visual data of students performance
Dashboard:
Used for students to access their course
Doesn’t display much information
Has an upcoming calendar with due date and assignment
Profile:
Shows different pages for student information, blog,
portfolio and badges, interest and activities
Persona
Biography
I’m a highschool senior from San Francisco in the top 10% of my class. I’m president of many extracurricular clubs on campus and my interests are in STEM. I work closely with my highschool counselor and she recommended that I take part in Y-Labs Ventures to experience in mentorship and solving real world challenges.
Talented
Intelligent
Dilligent
Motivated
“I was looking for an extracurricular activity and academic program that is will challenge me and help me gain real world experience!”
Motivation
Gain experience
Make an impact
Meet new peers
Goals
Frustrations
Gain new experiences outside school
Further academic interests
Get into her top college choices
Lack of educational programs
Using outdated learning management systems
Making an impact on society
Time constraints
Joyce Chiu
Academic Star
Age
Location
Job
Family
17
San Francisco
Student
Single
After gathering secondary research and analyzing user interviews previously conducted by the client, I created a persona of a high school student that would frequently utilize Y-Lab’s product.
Sketches
Dashboard
Profile
Pulling from the research, I wanted to design a fun and modern dashboard. I sketched an inspirational quote to motivate students and have goals and announcements on top to allow clear communication
I wanted to design a profile where students can take ownership of their work and share their personality. I wanted to add badges to motivate students to achieve different goals and display a portfolio and progress report so students can share how they’re doing in the program with their peers.
Wireframes
Dashboard
Profile
After consulting with the design team, they wanted to keep what’s urgent and important on top. I switched the inspirational quote and goals list for a quicklink to their upcoming class and their calendar/schedule.
The client wanted to put the progress report and any visualization images or charts to the profile.
First Iteration
Dashboard
Profile - Academic
Profile - Personal
The original design was considered too cluttered and I had to keep the dashboard simple and remove items that did not pertain to the MVP
The profile was split into two sections, academic and personal, to keep the design minimal and easy to use.
The client wanted to add analytics and charts to track the students use of the platform.
Usability Test
In a short amount of time, I was only able to interview and test with two high school students from the San Francisco/Bay Area.
Some key insights were:
There’s a lot to learn from other competitors
Schoology, used by many high schools, is a simple interface and users commented on how they are used to this platform
Users liked Y-Lab’s colorful design, fun icons and said it was more friendly and clean than Schoology
Both users liked the customization options, like the added panels, but disliked the 3 buttons to edit each section
As much as they liked the different panels, both stated they personally wouldn’t add certain panels, as it wasn’t important to them
Felt the analytics on the profile weren’t too important
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Users compared this design with Schoology
Customization is important!
Simple > Complicated
Final Design - Dashboard
Onboarding
Add or Remove Panel
Confirm Removal of Panel
Dashboard Without the Profile Panel
Dashboard Main Page
Dashboard Edit
Customize Reminders
The final design for the Dashboard consolidated the users ability to edit each panel and kept with a more simpler design for an easier user experience.
Final Design - Profile
Profile - Academic
Profile - Personal
The final design for the Profile consisted of changing the color to the style guide’s theme and creating a more fun and enjoyable interface.
What I Learned
Since I was jumping into this project at the end of their design process, I had to fully understand the product and research the users before I could get started. Not being at the start of the products journey taught me that I must be flexible and ask many questions on my part to create a product that the client and user would enjoy using.
I was given 4 weeks on this project to research, ideate, prototype, test and validate. This did not leave much time to find enough users to test and interview and make heavy edits to the design. I had to be flexible and improvise in who I reached out to and combining user tests and interviews all into one session with the user.
Because my team was remote and in different time zones, it was important to clearly communicate with my team to check up on their status, to double check if I understood their needs and if our designs were cohesive and consistent.
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Jumping into a middle of the project requires great understanding of the product
You have to improvise when you’re short on time
Communication is key in successfully designing a product
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