Bitconnect Milestone 3
A. User Experience Requirements
1.Decompose your proposed solution from Milestone 2 into related user stories. It is highly recommended that you organize your user stories into a hierarchy based on related activities and tasks.
Our potential design is tailored for two types of users: teachers and students. So we divided up the users stories into teachers and students user stories.
Teachers User Stories
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As a teacher, I want to list available learning resources and modules in an easy to digest way
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As a teacher, I want students to be able to safely access and interact with the platform
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As a teacher, I want students to be able to register for my class securely and easily
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As a teacher, I want to be able to use video games to foster socialization among students.
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As a teacher, I want to be able to control when my students are able to communicate.
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As a teacher, I want to have multiple sessions for different learning groups.
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As a teacher, I want to have a good feedback feature that does not stress students when they fail in the game.
Students Users Stories
- As a student, I want to be able to see my friends’ virtual avatars and interact with them/work together as opposed to just seeing their camera in a zoom call.
- As a student, I want to be able to use a nickname so that I can play without being too shy.
- As a student, I want to learn in a fun and engaging environment so I don’t get bored too quickly.
- As a student, I want to be able to learn in a way that is familiar to me, such as through video games.
- As a student, I want the virtual learning environment to be easy for me to learn how to use.
- As a student, I want to be able to browse games for each class so that I can join and play with my peers in that class at any time.
- As a student, I want to be able to add questions to a game so that my peers and I can play and answer these questions together.
- As a student, I want to be anonymous when I fall short while playing the game.
- As a student, I want to be able to enroll in my teacher’s class as easily as possible
2.Which user stories are most relevant to your proposed solution and why? It could be all of them or perhaps only a few. Whatever you pick, please provide a strong justification with supporting evidence.
Teacher User Stories
- As a teacher, I want to list available learning resources and modules in an easy to digest way.
- Justification: Since online learning can be more difficult than in-person learning because of factors such as distractions at home, teachers could list available learning resources and modules for students to be able to consult both in and outside of the classroom.
- As a teacher, I want to be able to use video games to foster socialization among students.
- Justification: One of the most important aspects of education is proper socialization and teaching/learning social skills. Because of the rise in online learning due to COVID-19, many opportunities for social learning have been cut, or greatly diminished. Our solution should attempt to foster socialization to bridge the gap caused by virtual learning.
- As a teacher, I want to be able to control when my students are able to communicate.
- Justification: This is to both have times that teachers cannot be interrupted so they can lecture, and so that specific students that are being disruptive are able to be silenced so that other students can continue to learn.
- As a teacher, I want students to be able to register for my class securely and easily
- Justification: As a group, we introduced Single Sign On to our platforms and focused on keeping the platform secure and easy to use. Being able to import information from the schooling organization reduces frustration for the teacher as well as the students. We figured the simpler it is to get signed up and started, the better.
- As a teacher, I want to have a good feedback feature that does not stress students when they fail in the game.
- Justification: Especially during lectures, it is important to get quick feedback from students to know approximately how well they understand information presented
Student User Stories
- As a student, I want to be able to use a nickname so that I can play without being too shy.
- Justification: One theme of our proposed solution is to reduce anxiety among students. One way to achieve this is to allow students to choose nicknames for themselves which will allow them to play without being judged by others if they do poorly in the games. That also increases anonymization.
- As a student, I want to be able to add questions to a game so that my peers and I can play and answer these questions together.
- Justification: The idea of this user story aligns with another the second theme of our proposed solution where we intend to engage students in an interactive environment. This user story allows students to ask questions in a game and cooperate to answer these questions together.
- As a student, I want to be able to browse games for each class so that I can join and play with my peers in that class at any time.
- Justification: This user story also aligns with two themes of our proposed solutions: reducing anxiety and fostering socialization. Students can join any game they wish to play in. For instance, shy students may wish to play in not so crowded play rooms where they can have more socialization with their peers.
- As a student, I want to be able to see my friends’ virtual avatars and interact with them/work together as opposed to just seeing their camera in a zoom call.
- Justification: This user story was chosen so that students can be more comfortable when interacting in a virtual environment. Rather than simply just talking to their peers through a Zoom camera, interacting with their peers’ avatars closely emulates the social aspect of an in-person classroom that are crucial for growing students.
- As a student, I want the virtual learning environment to be easy for me to learn how to use.
- Justification: Learning school material virtually is already more difficult for students than learning in-person, so it’s imperative that the virtual learning environment doesn’t add to that stress. This is why it should be easy for students to learn how to use it, so that they can jump in and start learning their class material as soon as possible.
- As a student, I want to use gamified assignments to keep track of my progress and encourage me to improve my skills through the use of leaderboards, tournaments, and ranks/levels.
- Justification: the whole idea of utilizing video games as a facilitator of socialization infers that the education system will be, to some extent, gamified. Combining gamification and anonymization will minimize unhealthy competition, and encourage healthy competition simultaneously.
- As a student, I want to see and use common video game paradigms (inventory management, hotbar, common interaction keys, typical camera system, WASD movement, etc.) so that the learning curve for the interface is minimal.
- Justification: Rather than reinventing the wheel, it would be useful for kids (who most likely have prior online game experience) to have a familiar user interface. Using existing paradigms, such as WASD movement and mouse camera movement, lowers the learning curve for using the interface.
- As a student, I want to be anonymous when I fall short while playing the game.
- Justification: As bullying is an issue that is pervasive throughout our society, it is important to do anything to prevent it. Ergo, a method to hide individual performance will prevent bullying, and makes it so students are more likely to try harder in activities.
- As a student, I want to be able to enroll in my teacher’s class as easily as possible
- Justification: In addition to the similar “Teacher use case” security issues above, due to the age of our target group we also decided it would be more engaging to have casual terminology like “Guilds” and “Players” so I changed my wireframes to reflect those changes in my higher fidelity mockup.
User stories removed:
- As a teacher, I want students to be able to safely access and interact with the platform
- As a teacher, I want to have multiple sessions for different learning groups.
Justification: We decided that these user stories were both too broad and described only non-functional requirements for our system, which would not translate well into mockups for our interface. These are still important ideas, but they were not suitable for this stage in development.
B. Ideation and Preliminary Designs
1.For each of the relevant user stories you identified and justified in (A), generate ideas for alternative designs that could be used to tell that story.
2.For each alternative design of a user story, produce a wireframe with enough artboards (i.e., pages, screens, etc.) that a potential user might be able to provide useful feedback.**
Teacher User Stories
As a teacher, I want to be able to use video games to foster socialization among students.
Design alternative #1
For the first design, we decided to have multiple groups laid out in a grid pattern so that teachers would have a bird’s eye view of all the groups. This way, teachers would have easy access to all the students.
Design alternative #2
For this mockup, we decided to lay out the students in a “zoom” like layout, which may be easier for teachers to understand, if they’ve used the zoom interface before.
As a teacher, I want to list available learning resources and modules in an easy to digest way
Design Alternative #1
As a teacher, I want to be able to control when my students are able to communicate.
Justification: A single mute-all allows easier muting than target muting, but targeted muting allows more fine-tuned control.
As a teacher, I want to have a good feedback feature that does not stress students when they fail in the game.
Justification: Text chat allows more detailed feedback, but emoji-based is easier to read at a glance and see if anyone isn’t feeling as confident about material.
As a teacher, I want to be able to invite my students to my class securely and easily.
Student User Stories
As a student, I want to be able to use a nickname so that I can play without being too shy.
Design alternative #1
The first design alternative for this user story is to generate random nicknames from which students can choose.
Design alternative #2
The second design alternative for this user story is generate nicknames based on a set of questions and preferences of the students.
As a student, I want to be able to add questions to a game so that my peers and I can play and answer them together.
Design alternative #1
The first design alternative is to have a dedicated questions or discussion page in the game where students can ask questions and answer these questions together. Such a design decision is popular in learning systems where there is a dedicated page for question and answering.
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Design alternative #2
The second design alternative is to allow students to add questions next to objects in the game, such as minecraft. Other students can find these questions and try to answer them.
As a student, I want to be able to browse games for each class so that I can join and play with my peers in any class at any time.
Design alternative #1
The first design alternative is to list all the available games along with some statistics for classes at once.
Design alternative #2
The second design alternative is to display a subset of the available games and allow students to navigate to other games.
As a student, I want to be able to see my friends’ virtual avatars and interact with them/work together as opposed to just seeing their camera in a zoom call.
Design Alternative #1
As a student, I want the virtual learning environment to be easy for me to learn how to use.
Design Alternative #1
As a student, I want to use gamified assignments to keep track of my progress and encourage me to improve my skills through the use of leaderboards, tournaments, and ranks/levels.
Design Alternative #1
In this design alternative, the student is presented with multiple modal windows corresponding to each class they’re taking that year. All assignments, grades, and interactions take place within their respective class section.
Design Alternative #2
For this alternative, we decided to draw on inspiration from the MMORPG “quest” paradigm. All assignments, quizzes, and tests would be assigned to the player as quests, and would not be organized by class, but by either proximity to the starting point in the game world or due date (ascending)
As a student, I want to see and use common video game paradigms (inventory management, hotbar, common interaction keys, typical camera system, WASD movement, etc.) so that the learning curve for the interface is minimal.
Design Alternative #1
Pictured below is an illustration of the in-game WASD movement system, from a first person view.
Design Alternative #2
Rather than navigating around the world from a first-person view, student interaction could potentially be performed through NPC interaction (clicking on the NPC, accepting assignment, and generally using the mouse pointer to navigate through the world).
As a student, I want to be anonymous when I fall short while playing the game.
Justification: Individual anonymity allows students to choose when to be hidden, but teacher control allows the anonymity to be global when needed
As a student, I want to be able to easily enroll in my teacher’s class.
Design Alternative 1:
We created a basic, simple user flow for student and teachers to create and gain access to the platform securely.
Design Alternative 2:
We decided to add text that’s more friendly as well as user icons for the students.
C. Detailed Designs
1.For each of the relevant user stories you identified and justified in (A), pick what you think is the best design alternative you wireframed in (B), then produce a higher fidelity mockup of the wireframe.
Teacher User Stories
As a teacher, I want to list available learning resources and modules in an easy to digest way
Justification: This allows for students to access their learning materials even outside of the classroom. They can also create/join game rooms based on the material and save questions from the game rooms they participate in for later review.
As a teacher, I want to be able to use video games to foster socialization among students.
Justification: Teachers have a hybrid interface where they can easily see their entire student body on the right, and the list of breakout groups to the bottom. Both the students and breakout rooms have their own set of actions. Multiple students can be assigned to a breakout room, where they can all be given the same quiz, or set of actions to perform.
As a teacher, I want to be able to control when my students are able to communicate.
Justification: An emoji-system allows quick feedback that can be read at a glance by the teacher, and let them know how students are feeling.
Student User Stories
As a student, I want to be able to use a nickname so that I can play without being too shy.
Justification: We think this is a good design alternative because it could make students engaged in a game with a nickname that best describes them and their personality.
As a student, I want to be able to add questions to a game so that my peers and I can play and answer them together.
Justification: We think this is a good design alternative because it allows students to add questions next to objects in the game. That makes it more relatable instead of just having a list of questions in a questions or discussion page.
As a student, I want to be able to browse games for each class so that I can join and play with my peers in that class at any time.
Justification: We think this is a good design alternative because it does not show so much information at once. It could be easier for students to compare and choose at a low scale.
As a student, I want to be able to see my friends’ virtual avatars and interact with them/work together as opposed to just seeing their camera in a zoom call.
Justification: It allows the students to show off their avatars, as well as see each others’ avatars while learning/playing.
As a student, I want the virtual learning environment to be easy for me to learn how to use.
Justification: This would allow for students to access the tutorial from any page on the virtual learning environment, rather than having to actively seek out the page. If the student runs into an issue at any point, they can simply open the tutorial.
As a student, I want to use gamified assignments to keep track of my progress and encourage me to improve my skills through the use of leaderboards, tournaments, and ranks/levels.
Justification: For this user story, we decided to incorporate the quest idea from our design alternative from part B. We decided that this approach would create a more student centric experience, rather than a class based experience. We also decided that, in addition to fostering anonymity, introducing healthy competition through leaderboard stats would help students compete and cooperate with each other.
As a student, I want to be anonymous when I fall short while playing the game.
Justification: Letting the teacher control when anonymity is enabled allows it to be global over the game, rather than target at individual students, which would in effect not be really anonymous at all
As a student, I want to see and use common video game paradigms (inventory management, hotbar, common interaction keys, typical camera system, WASD movement, etc.) so that the learning curve for the interface is minimal.
Justification: We decided to incorporate the idea of WASD movement and mouse camera controls into our system. For the mockups, a 3rd person view is used to illustrate the movement in a 3D space. In the 2nd to last mockup, we can see the effect when moving the mouse horizontally: the camera is rotated around the player. In the last mockup, we re-introduce the idea of interacting with NPCs, but in a 3D environment, activated by pressing the E key while in close proximity.
As a teacher, I want to be able to invite my students to my class securely and easily.
Justification: We decided to add more friendly, casual text as well as incorporate feedback from our collaboration session where we ideated a “guild chat” of sorts for students to ask questions and talk.
As a student, I want to be able to easily enroll in my teacher’s class.
Justification: We decided to add more friendly, casual text as well as incorporate feedback from our collaboration session where we ideated a “guild chat” of sorts for students to ask questions and talk.
Contribution
- Nathan Wynn
- User stories, low and high fidelity designs, group discussion, and website
- Researched existing multiplayer online game paradigms and incorporated multiple commonplace interface techniques
- Kathleen Kim
- User stories, low and high fidelity designs, and group discussion
- Focused on streamlining the creation process
- Christian Summerlin
- User stories, low and high fidelity designs, and group discussion
- Researched existing games, and incorporated external designs into the higher and lower fidelity mockups
- Alex Mailloux
- User stories, low and high fidelity designs, and group discussion
- Focused on functional mockups using Adobe XD to help with the prototyping process
- Mohammed Aldosari
- User stories, low and high fidelity designs, and group discussion
- Researched anonymization and its effects on more introverted students