Observations

Student 1: Xavier treks to Algorithms

Friend Center is a good walk from most of the rest of campus, so Xavier needs about seven or so minutes — five if walking quickly and looking a little silly — to make it to 11 am class on time. This isn’t really helped by the fact that the 10 am class often overruns its lecture time, so by the time Xavier is out the door of Frist it’s already 10:56 and he’s going to be a little late no matter what. There is no listening to music, checking mail, or talking to friends. There is only speedwalking like an Olympic speedwalker (sorry) to get to class just as lecture begins. I noticed that this sort of thing happens a lot, especially with unfortunately spaced out classes across campus, so far from having the time to do things between classes, most people are just rushing not to be late.

Student 2: Yancey waits for Graphics

Yancey gets to class a good 15 minutes early, mostly because the classroom is close to lunch. Sits down, pulls out laptop, starts looking through emails. Writes one and sends it. Deletes a bunch, sorts a bunch more. Checks out Hacker News for the latest buzz. Yancey is going to pay attention in lecture, so when the class starts the laptop closes. Triaging email seems to be a pretty popular task to do in the ten or fifteen minutes before class starts; since everyone seems to get 50-60 emails a day, triaging between classes is generally a good idea to avoid an inbox explosion later on.

Student 3: Zeus shows up to Sociology

Xavier gets to a 10 am class at 9:59, looking tired but not rushed. Probably didn’t have a class at 9. Probably just woke up ten minutes ago, actually. Flips open laptop, gets out notebook, starts looking at a problem set that has maths on it and is therefore probably not sociology related. Has a minute to ask a neighbor about one of the problems, but then the professor starts teaching on time and Xavier turns back to work. Appears to only marginally be paying attention to the sociology lecture, is mostly working on his work for another class. This happens quite a lot in this large lecture, which has material that is either uninteresting or identical to the assigned readings.

15 ideas

1. Mailfree: an app that delays delivery of email, text messages, Facebook notifications, and anything else that rings or buzzes during lectures, to reduce distraction. It delivers them all in a bunch right after class ends, to allow students to triage between classes.
2. Something that lets friends coordinate walking schedules to make those ten minute walks a little more interesting. If friends are both going from Lewis to EQuad, the app might suggest being walking buddies.
3. Optimization of walking routes in order to figure out the fastest way to get from one building to another.
4. Database of times it takes to go from buildings to other buildings, socially sourced from experience. Gets more accurate over time and tailors itself to your walking pace.
5. Something to set an x-minute reminder that lets you know when to leave lunch in order to get to class on time.
6. A visualization app for the professor, displaying how many people are going to be late to their next class if the lecture runs over. Knows student schedules.
7. A way for friends who have a few bikes between them to coordinate bike sharing in order to cover long distances between classes more efficiently with fewer bikes.
8. An app to help students who have no time for lunch and students coming from lunch to coordinate bringing bagged lunches to class.
9. A social tool that rates classes for usefulness in order to enable students to make informed decisions about whether to attend lecture.
10. A collaborative synopsis and summary of each lecture that students write up after class, to aid in review.
11. An app that updates students on the latest and upcoming campus events and happenings, to add a more modern way of advertising to students than posters on lampposts.
12. An attendance utility for the professor that scans the seats in an auditorium and tallies how many people attended lecture
13. A questions tool, so that students can immediately write down a bunch of questions from lecture before forgetting so that they can later ask them either on Piazza or office hours.
14. Announcement time – before relevant classes (WWS for a politics talk, COS for NVidia, for example), students promoting these events can give a 30-second spiel on each event in the front of the room.
15. A way for students to provide feedback on workloads to the professor, so that assignments and due dates can be tweaked if the professor sees heavy imbalances.

Mailfree:

Mailfree (which probably shouldn’t be called that, since it handles more than just mail) is an app that delays delivery of email, text messages, Facebook notifications, and anything else that rings or buzzes, until after lecture is over. It delivers them all in a bunch right after class ends, to allow students to triage between classes — and the schedule is ideally pulled from Google Calendar or ICE, so the user won’t even have to worry about inputting schedules manually. Exceptions can be made for certain people, from whom you’d want to receive notifications regardless of whether you were in class. This would dramatically cut down on the amount of buzzing in classes, which — despite not making as much noise as ringtones — is still distracting.

Left: what we have now. Lots of bzz and vrrrm and so on in lecture, and people being distracted by various Facebook messages and so on. Right: with mailfree, you could hear a cricket in the classroom (not that there would be one, that would be weird). Since students use in-between time for triaging emails anyway, why not just dump the previous hours’ worth of emails and messages at the end of lecture, and keep silent during class?

Mailfree is meant to be invisible — it recedes into the background, automating everything, so there is no daily user interface. This is the settings panel, from which users can add calendars for Mailfree to use to determine whether it should delay notifications, and it also allows for setting exceptions (calls, emails, messages for each contact) so that if you don’t want to miss a call from your summer internship recruiter offering you a job, you can set that. There’s also a big button that’s always present in the settings that allows you to either activate or deactivate it. The hope is, of course, that you’ll leave it activated most of the time.

Deduprinceton:

This is an app meant to optimize the time students spend working and in lecture. Using data collected from previous years a course is offered, Deduprinceton compiles data on whether a lecture is redundant (repeats a lot of the same stuff in the assigned reading), interesting or not, and possibly other factors that determine whether a student on the fence about attending lecture (for any number of reasons — a lot of other work, boring lectures, did the reading, or just plain lazy) should go to a particular lecture. After lecture, students can give their take immediately by dragging a few sliders and optionally adding a couple comments, while the content is still fresh in mind. Professors could potentially also see the aggregate data, in order to see if lectures are effective or not and possibly to adjust future years’ curriculums to better engage with students and boost lecture attendance.

(1) This is the main interface you look at when deciding whether to attend lecture or not. Afterwards, you click the appropriate button to give feedback about the lecture. (2) The flyout menu gives a list of all the classes you’re taking, pulled from SCORE and authenticated. If you’re just sitting in or auditing classes, or if you don’t want to give feedback, you can delete or add more classes, but your results won’t be aggregated with the authenticated students’ results for accuracy purposes.

(1) You attended lecture! Therefore, you know how it went: was it a repeat of what was in the book? Was it super interesting and engaging? Was it new material, but so boring that you fell asleep? Drag the sliders to match, and optionally add a comment. (2) You didn’t go. But that’s still useful data — why didn’t you go? If it was just because you overslept because you were too tired, that may not be a negative for the lecture itself. If, on the other hand, you didn’t attend because the previous reviews were poor, then that says something else.

Sometimes, a few numbers and bar charts just won’t cut it. A comment or two can go a long way in detailing exactly what was great (or what wasn’t) during lecture.

User testing

Users AA and SY just finished up with lunch, and is off to class in the EQuad. She always goes to this particular class, but pretended that it was a class that she might consider skipping.

As it turns out, she would also ask her friend (who’s going to the same class) whether it’s worth going. Suggestion: Maybe a realtime updating chart of who’s going or not might help, especially if the course is significantly different from previous offerings (different professor, different schedule of topics) and some students are aware of that.

The bar chart format appeared to be quite effective at visualizing the various parameters, although sometimes they looked a little bit like they should also be sliders. After finding the slider interface, it was noted that the mirroring of the sliders and the bars for viewing and adjusting the ratings helped a lot in allowing for accurate feedback.

User NP also goes to just about every class, but tried it out anyway.

While she probably wouldn’t actively use the app all that much, since she goes to class, she noted that it would make sense for those who treat lectures as optional. Also, the information provided does give a good overview of whether the lecture will be interesting or engaging, which is a good indicator of whether it is a class in which homework can be done without missing any of the material. The interface didn’t provide any significant struggle, and navigation (designed to be similar to most iPhone apps) was fairly easy and discovered without much explanation.

User AS tried out the app while heading to class in Friend.

AS got quite confused about why the “Did you attend?” Yes/No” was presented on the same screen as the ratings. I hadn’t thought of that, and he’s completely right — you’d want to present the ratings before class, and the “Did you attend?” screen after class.

AS also cited an incentive issue: at the beginning, there will be very little data in the app, so people won’t be inclined to contribute. One way to perhaps increase user engagement and input is to not show the ratings for the next class until the user rates the current one (either rating the class if attended, or explaining why if did not attend). Still doesn’t quite solve the bootstrapping issue, but over time, this will become quite useful in keeping user engagement and input high.

A disembodied hand (belonging to KO) has just pressed the “More information” button next to “Redundancy” for class XYZ123, at which point we are now examining comments from previous years. Since comment threads can get very long and annoying to look through quickly, an upvote system or some way of promoting useful comments was suggested to only show the top few, most accurate comments. Also, this once again demonstrates that students trust each others’ judgment regarding whether to attend class or not; a common situation that was mentioned was the text – “Are you going to XYZ 123 tomorrow?” which influences whether the asker decides to attend as well.

Distilled insights:

• Social does work in the context of attending class. If a bunch of people didn’t attend a previous year, there was probably a good reason for it, and ratings help elucidate that. Comments provide the nuance that is sometimes missing from a number.
• Comments get really overwhelming really quickly. They need to be limited to only the most important, most relevant, most accurate few. This requires the creation of a very robust reputation system and a good recommendation system.
• A lot of people always try to attend class. This is a very good thing, but it doesn’t really bode well for incentivizing the use of this app; those who go all the time probably don’t see a good reason to use it, so those who don’t go won’t have as much data off of which to base their decisions.
• The temporal factor is confusing. Since comments and ratings made this year will be seen by students next semester or next year, it is unclear in the current interface what lecture I’m looking at and which year rated it this way. This also raises issues when classes are taught by different professors, or the syllabus is changed, or the professor updates the lecture material in response to user feedback. There needs to be an accurate way to account for all this without getting too complicated; otherwise, this app will just be very unreliable for any class that isn’t exactly the same every single year (at which point conventional wisdom and word of mouth work quite well also).
• The original idea was to allow students to add/drop classes to rate without authentication, which was quickly pointed out as a horrible idea. There needs to be some sort of authentication with SCORE, so that you can only rate classes you’re actually enrolled in. You should, however, be able to view ratings for other classes, but at this point functionality starts to overlap with ICE and course ratings done by the registrar, so that isn’t really the main focus of this app.

A description of how you conducted your observation (who, where, when).

• HCI class
  I started by observing students in the HCI class. The most common activity students did during the 10-minute period was to check their emails. Quite a number of people read articles online. Also, a few worked on their assignments for other classes (i.e. coding), which they continued to work on though the actual lecture.
• An English Major
  I interviewed a friend of mine who is an English major before her precept. She commented that she often feels the 10-minute period before her class is not long enough to do meaningful work. From my observation, I noticed that she rotated between checking her emails, checking her Facebook and reading news articles.
• An MAE Major
  I also observed another friend of mine who is an MAE major before his class. The first thing he did as he sat down in his seat was to pull out his work for another class. However, this quickly ended when another student sat next to him and started chatting with him. He then pulled out his smartphone, read some comics and played a quick mini game.

Ideas

1. Princeton Amazon Mechanical Turk, allowing students to get paid for doing simple tasks during the 10 minute period.
2. App that gives you a funny Internet video for you to watch during the 10 minute period.
3. App that gives you informative, but random facts to read during the 10-minute period.
4. 10 minute work out routine.
5. SnapChat for 10 minutes. Students can send outrageous pictures to friends which are only visible during the 10 minute period.
6. Betting game on the first (second or third) word the professor or preceptor will say.
7. 10 minute digest of news that happened during the previous class.
8. 10-minute summary of the upcoming lecture.
9. App that tells you where your friends are sitting, or tells your friends where you are sitting.
10. Mental warm-up app. Shows you a simple puzzle or an article that’s relevant to your class.
11. Class crush. Send a note to your crush in your class during the 10 minute period, and they will receive the message after class.
12. Class bingo. Submit bingo words during the 10-minute period. Played throughout class, and winner is announced at the end of the lecture.
13. App that provides a digest of notable things that happened in the users’ social networks during the previous class.
14. A campus GPS app that finds the optimal path given the places you need to go.

Why I chose the two ideas.

• App that provides a digest of notable things that happened in the users’ social networks during the previous class.
  The most common activity students did during the 10-minute waiting period was to check their social networking websites or emails; however, 10 minutes is not often long enough to check everything that has happened during the previous class. This app will help students efficiently check whatever social networking service they choose during the 10-minute period.
• Betting game on the first (second or third) word the professor or preceptor will say.
  It is always an inconvenience when some students come to class late, because there is not a strong enforcing mechanism or an incentive. However, if we make a game that makes it advantageous to come early to class, as the betting game I thought of, I predict that the number of students who come late to class will decrease significantly.
• An app that allows the user to share notes during the 10-minute period.

Prototypes
10-minute digest

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

User Testing (10-minute Digest)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Insights from Testing.
All the users did not have too much difficulty using the application: it is really a simple aggregation application. However, I noticed that some users try to swipe the tabs to the side instead of the intended vertical direction. People really liked the fact that the application filters notifications by time frame. However, there were recommendations about allowing the user to directly interact with other social networks. Also, users wanted a “see-all” feature, which allows the user to see the notifications from all social networks in one place.

2. Observations

Person 1: Thermodynamics to COS 226 precept
Before lecture was ending, Person 1 (Joe) put their stuff away in their backpack and began to get ready to leave. The professor began to finish up lecture and everyone in the class packed, including Joe. Joe got up briskly, and left through the back exit of the lecture hall, as if he was in a rush. Joe was one of the first five people to leave. Joe then put his earphones in and listened to music (specifically, Avicii) on the way to his next precept. As Joe left the room, he had his large backpack over one shoulder (not both) and it seemed to be putting significant strain on his arm, because after a few seconds he put his arm through the other strap. He walked to the water fountain and took a quick sip of water and then entered the restroom. He entered and then entered a stall (I did not follow him into the stall…). After completing his business, he washed his hands, and checked himself out in the mirror, touching his hair briefly to fix his part. After drying his hands and leaving the restroom, Joe checked his phone again, to see if there were any notifications on his phone. He noticed a text message from his friend, and he then clicked on the message, replied, and sent the message all while walking toward the stairs to his next class. As he walked up the stairs, he stopped typing on his phone and just held his phone. After finishing his message, he skipped a track for his music to a different artist. He then walked over to his class, and peered inside the classroom before entering, to ensure that the previous precept was finished. He got inside, sat down on a desk in the middle of the rows, and set down his backpack on the ground next to him. He then pulled out his laptop, turned it on and opened up a browser to log in to Facebook. The rest of the period was spent with him looking on facebook until the preceptor began to call the class to attention, at which point he closed facebook and looked toward the front of the room.

Person 2: Religion to Organic Chemistry
Person 2 (Jane) was still attentively taking notes when the 10 minute period began, but this was because the professor went a little over time. As the professor wrapped up, Jane took her time putting her belongings in her bag, individually placing each pencil and item where it belonged. She then got up and walked over to the professor and asked a brief question regarding the assigned reading for the week. After the professor answered, she went back to her desk, put on her backpack, and walked out of the room with another student. The two students exchanged dialogue while walking, and they both seemed to laugh and enjoy each others’ company. The topic of conversation was regarding eating clubs, specifically the Terrace Offerings that recently took place. For the sake of privacy, the exact conversation is not transcribed here. While they conversed, they walked along a path to their next class. However, at a few times during the walk, they would falter in their direction because they would internally disagree on which path to take, so usually Jane would stop the direction she was going and go towards the other individual. A few times throughout the walk, either Jane or the person she was walking with would wave and say hello to an individual they knew, usually accompanied by a smile. As Jane walked to organic chemistry, she had difficulty opening the large door to Frick, so she just went through the door that her companion opened. She walked down the stairs and into the lecture hall, faltering before selecting a seat on the left side, near the front, and sitting next to her friend.

Person 3: Staying in the same class
Person 3 (Mark) does not have to switch classes when he waits for his 10-minute period. Therefore, when he finished with his class, he sat quietly and put his stuff away, and then took his materials out for his next class (a different notebook). He then waited and sat quietly, watching the preceptor finish answering instructions. As the preceptor left, Mark went on his mobile smartphone, and played a game of Temple Run 2. He continued to play until a few students entered the room for the next class, at which point he closed the application and then prepared some notes for his class – he dated the page, wrote the name of the course and the topic of discussion for the day. He then sat idly, waiting for precept to begin, while flipping his pen out of what seemed to be just boredom/apathy.

Overall Observations:

1. When students enter classroom before precept starts, they just sit there
2. Students who arrive late often struggle locating a seat during lecture, much to their embarrassment
3. Students carry around very heavy backpacks full of books and papers
4. Students walk around with laptops and computers
5. Professors usually arrive a few minutes early and set up their equipment
6. Students must sometimes cross crosswalks, etc. in order to make it to their class on time.
7. Between classes, students eat food, finish up problem sets, perform actions on their smartphone: messaging, facebook, email, etc, or speak with their friends who are also going to the same class as them. Sometimes try to get coffee or something
8. Students who are late run to class
9. Students often skip meals in order to get to their classes
10. Students often use the restroom before/after classes, or during this period
11. Students listen to music while walking
12. Students feel they waste time during this period

3. Brainstorm

1. Check for red lights at crosswalks, to determine how fast you need to walk to make the green light or not.
2. See lines at Starbucks, etc. on your phone to know whether or not it’s possible to stop by and get a drink.
3. ClassSeat: Have a seating visualization or a door visualization of the lecture halls so when people come late they can know where to immediately go to sit or enter.
4. Small mobile quiz after/before each lecture for students to review concepts
5. QuickSong: Automatically selects right amount of music to fill 10 minute gap
6. Sync bus schedule with classes so you can ride buses to next location
7. Alerts you to make sure you have all the right notes and textbooks for the class by tracking what is in your bag
8. Locates water fountains/bathrooms on your route if you are thirsty/need to go to the bathroom
9. Exercise between classes, select time and distance and it generates an activity for you to do while waiting.
10. Reads your notes to you through your headphones before your class begins or while you are walking
11. Sensors to improve posture while walking from class to class
12. Ball that vibrates when your friends are near, so you can find them to chat or just hang out and toss a ball around.
13. Flyer to Calendar: converts flyer events to google calendar events easily by taking a picture of a flyer so it uploads to your calendar
14. QuickLaundry: times your laundry with your classes schedule to determine the best place to do your laundry to fit into your schedule in 10minute intervals
15. Calculates speed at which you must run in order to get to your class on time
16. LateLecture: gives a live feed of first 5minutes of lecture as you’re walking over to your class if you’re late

4. Selection of Ideas

Motivation for Idea #1 – I selected the ClassSeat application, because I think it would be a useful application for many students for a variety of reasons (being late, wanting to sit near the front or the back of the class, etc) and would solve the issue of being late to class without disturbing the professor/students.

Motivation for Idea #2 – I selected the QuickSong application, because one of my students (Joe) mentioned to me that he had problems with always being in the middle of a good song while the class was starting, and I felt it would solve a small issue in a very easy and effective way.

5. Protoypes

ClassSeat:

In order from left to right, the screens would be as follows:

QuickSong:

Note: read this app from left to right, with the small tags underneath being the menu options that would appear for that given page.

6. Feedback

I tested the device on three individuals: Natalie, Vanessa, and John. Their overall input are as follows:

• Natalie

Natalie was at first confused by what to do with the application, she wasn’t really clear it was a phone application at all – however, this may be more due to improper set up than anything. Natalie then typed in her information, but did not know how to get to the next screen or hit “enter” which suggests that perhaps there should be a return key on the keyboard or a “go” button to click once the information has been put in. She also looked for a tab key of some sort, but was unable to find one. After getting to the main QuickSong page where the music was playing, she was unclear as to what to click, and she kept clicking the name of the song, hoping that it would do something (it didn’t).

Pictures of Natalie:

Natalie has some trouble finding the tab key as she types in her name:

Natalie changes the playlist successfully!

Natalie tries to click on the name of the song but it doesn’t do anything:

• Vanessa

Vanessa shared similar input as Natalie yet she offered a few more insights. Firstly, she complained that the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons only reordered the list and didn’t delete or add the options. This is important input which suggests that the thumbs icons could be changed to something more reasonable for reordering the playlist. She overall was perplexed by the playlist idea; how did one change the playlist? Where do the playlists come from? What if you want to get rid of a song from a playlist.Vanessa also was confused as to how the QuickSong app knew when her next class was, she did not quite understand that it synced to ICE; so perhaps clarification there would be even better.

• John

John’s major complaint was that he probably wouldn’t care enough to use / download this application. As John played around with it, he seemed to understand the interface pretty well, but again tried to click on the name of the song, which did not have any action. John, however, thought that he wouldn’t really use the application in his daily schedule. Overall, John’s actions were pretty accurate with how I wanted the app to be used.

Overall insights: make the app overall more clear, people in general did not really understand what was happening at each step of the process. Also make it clearer what can be clicked on and what can’t be clicked on. Furthermore, perhaps have a little introduction to the app for first time users, because people often did not understand or have any clue what this app was meant for or supposed to do. Small features like having the tab key or the return key are also crucial. One big change would be the use of thumbs up and thumbs down icons for the ordering of the playlist, because that was very confusing in retrospect and could introduce alot of issues with the application. The general idea of the application was more or less well received. Perhaps I could extend the usage of the application beyond the 10 minute period and just generate short playlists that would fill a specified amount of time (this might solve John’s problem with the application). Another important feature would be to explain to the users that the playlists are selected at random from “My Music,” which should be an album on the phone that was already pre-selected by the user. More customization of playlists and more features that can order playlists, etc. would most definitely be useful, as Vanessa suggested.

1. OBSERVATIONS

I conducted both contextual interviews as well as personal observations of students and professors walking to and/or waiting for class. I asked the following prompting questions:

• What kind of activities do you do if you get to class early?
• What do you see your professors do?
• Can you describe your actions if you are late lecture?
• What’s your preferred method of walking to class? With friends, listening to music, etc. Are there any inconveniences related to that method of walking to class? (ex. can’t find friends)
• What are some things you would like to do in the 10 minutes before class, but it’s hard to do?

The results from the contextual interviews are as follows:

Molecular Biology major (F), sophomore, on the way to class in Friend (Early Morning) —

• If she gets to class early, plays with smartphone (checks email/facebook/reddit), may use laptop before class but depends on whether she will be taking notes on her laptop for the particular class.
• She may check the following class-related material: lecture notes (download and open), reviewing notes from last lecture for the quiz at the beginning of lecture (cell & dev bioogy), syllabus and upcoming assignments.
• Professors prepare lecture materials, don’t really do anything before lecture, erase the chalkboard.
• If late to lecture, she will be frantically copying down things on the board and trying to follow from there.
• Doesn’t ride a bike, mostly walks to class by herself and walks with a friend if she knows they are walking to the same class.

ORFE major (F), junior, waiting for class to start in Frist (Early Morning) —

• If I get to class early, she usually talks with people that I’ve walked to class with or check email/facebook on phone/laptop.
• Professors have played music and youtube videos (tangentially relevant to class), answer students’ questions, pass out papers before class, one professor has assigned seating so he places namecards out for every student.
• It’s really awkward to walk into class if late to lecture, will feel bad and sit and listen for first 10 minutes without taking notes or getting laptop out of bag (feeling guilty). Early to seminar more often since participation matters more.
• Difficult to find seats in large lecture halls, especially if it’s a large class. Don’t know where friends are sitting and sometimes need to climb over seats.
• By the second week of class, basically know which friends are in similar classes and walk with them.
• Would like to “preview” the lecture or read a little bit of what professor is going over. Other thing that would be nice is if we could go over what went on in previous class. Also, hard to find bathrooms in McCosh.

Woodrow Wilson school major (M), senior, eating lunch — 

• Check email on iphone, depending on class review notes from last lecture, think about other work.
• Professors speak with various students, fiddling with projectors, very often speaking with preceptors.
• Late to lecture actions depend on size of lecture — large lecture, would just walk in and find first empty seat and sit down; small lecture/class, everyone sits in same seat (you have a seat), know exactly which seat to go to.
• Like to walk to class quickly, optimal route.
• Problems: don’t know where water fountains are, can’t sharpen pencil (no pencil sharpeners!).

Personal interviews — I also observed professors and students in my own classes.

Sociology Professor (morning class): early to class, uses projector (has some trouble setting up and interacting with the system), has folders open for students to hand in assignments on a table at the front of the lecture hall, checks lecture material on laptop, watches and waits for students to get seated, starts class a little after the beginning time for lecture after students stop trickling into the lecture room.

Students before lecture: checking email/read news on laptops, talking among themselves after walking into class with friend, eating snacks (continues into class), asking professor/TA specific questions about assignment or previously discussed topic, turning in an assignment before class, signing in on a paper sign-in sheet that the professor passes around.

In summary, I observed the following design opportunities:

•  Make finding facilities simpler, ie. bathrooms, water fountains, pencil sharpeners (owned by other students?) seats in lecture halls…
• Help students look up class information that can be accessed in 10 minutes — quick due dates, admin info, professor’s email.
• Increase productivity of lecture learning with regards to reviewing material, previewing material, attendance…
• Short fun, interactive games to pass the time before lecture.
• Coordinating information with friends such as walking together to class.

2. BRAINSTORMING

The following are a list of ideas which Prakhar Agarwal (pagarwal@) and I came up with:

1. Morning Announcements — broadcasting information about the campus activities of the day on the projector prior to the beginning of lectures.
2. iSign-In — attendance mobile application which takes advantage of the smartphone’s “check-in” capability, letting students use phone GPS to record lecture attendance and replace sign-in sheets.
3. Upvote Me — Mobile application forum where students can submit class-relevant questions, allowing other students to “upvote” the best questions so that the professor answers them first.
4. ClickNAnswer — Mobile or web application which allows students to provide real-time feedback/answers to a professor’s questions, similar to the functionality of an i-clicker from physics classes.
5. Flashcard Matching — Allows students to create flashcard games for other students to play, like Sporcle for language classes.
6. Popcorn — Students log into a mobile app which allows the professor to randomly pick people to answer questions, facilitating class discussions, and may be a good way to record participation points.
7. MyDeadline — A mobile app where you can check the upcoming deadlines for a class (assignments, projects, etc), available in both calendar or task list form and can integrate with Blackboard.
8. SeatFinder — Mobile application that shows you which seats are full as a lecture starts to fill up and where your friends are sitting, hopefully motivating students to go to class.
9. CampusLife — Mobile calendar tailored to daily Princeton campus events, integrating with Facebook events to also show how many of your friends are going so you can better coordinate, as well as how many TigerTickets you have left.
10. WalkWithMe — Combines class schedule data from Ice and lecture room locations to show you a list of friends that have class nearby so you can walk the same direction together.
11. MyStudyGroup — A discussion board viewable on your mobile phone where students can aggregate what they learned from the previous lectures, rather than the professor posting the content.
12. Audit Course Recommender — For students with hour or more gaps in between classes, the application finds nearby lectures that are taught in that time so the student can audit the class.
13. Grade Calculator — Takes the median/mean/grade data from Blackboard and instantly computes a score, as well as possibly projecting the scores needed on future assignments to achieve the desired grade.
14. Map My Schedule — At the beginning of the semester, it’s annoying to keep looking up where your next class is so this app will plan out a route for you through the whole day!
15. iHydrated — Shows the water fountains nearby based on the building you are in (using phone GPS or selecting the building in a map), plus it keeps track of how much water you drink everyday, making sure you are fully hydrated.
16. ForgotMyCharger — Students can lend their electronics equipment for short-term use, like mac projector dongles/iphone charges/laptop chargers, could be useful for students who forgot chargers in class and can’t walk all the way back to their rooms.
17. Lecture++ — For classes that taught many years in a row, students can rank specific days of specific classes that have been really rewarding so students outside of the class can go to that specific lecture.

3. SELECT 2 FAVORITE IDEAS

8. SeatFinder — This app would be for students trying to find where their friends are sitting in class, looking for seats in very full lecture rooms, or those who are coming in late and improves the seat finding process, which can be very awkward, wastes time, and often causes unnecessary distractions for students already seated.

2. iSign-in: For classes where attendance in lectures matter, it’s really low-tech and inefficient to have students initial a piece of paper — students have to wait a long time for the paper to pass around, it allows for students to sign their friends in who aren’t actually in lecture, as well as wasting a lot of paper making these sign-in sheets.

4. PROTOTYPES

SeatFinder prototype:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

iSign-in prototype:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

5. FEEDBACK

Here are the following students I consulted for user testing:

Some pictures from their tests:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

• Gary asked if the black seats were the ones that were taken. Lauren also asked that question, and suggested that the open seats should be in color to be more visible and intuitive.
• Gary liked the idea that the star (“Faves”) option synced to phone contact. He would also use the Facebook friends option more than the other two.
• All the users said that if the lecture is really full (as shown by the app), would still attend.
• One question Gary asked about a potential problem: would we be trying to get this for every room on campus?
• Gary and Amy asked how reserving/claiming seats would be enforced — brought up the good point that if there are other students not using the app, they could take your seat.
• Amy thought this would be useful for more specific settings — like exams, could find seats quickly with time crunch before exam and enforce the honor code (after the face, see who was sitting next to whom if there was a honor code violation report).
• Both Amy and Lauren said that they would use either star (“Faves”) contacts or Blackboard, thought one was redundant.
• Amy didn’t think that either Option #1 or #2 is effective — suggested that the most fool-proof solution is to integrate it with the classroom (physically the seat is “marked” or show people in some way that it is taken).
• Lauren brought up a potential usage problem with people who are biking/longboarding to class — may encourage dangerous use of phone + bike/skateboard.
• All three users didn’t like the current way the Blackboard functionality is set up — hard to avoid people. Recommended solutions were a “permissions” system similar to Ice where you have to accept the other person’s  request. Another option suggested was an “allow people to find me” button which would make them findable through Bb.
• All the users thought the ability to see where the outlets are in class was great.
• Nobody picked the “Load more classes…” or “Looking for other classes” options.

6. INSIGHTS & FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS

• Make the interface simpler — based on the user testing, there’s no need to have both the star (“Faves”) option and blackboard option, so one should be removed. The users seemed to prefer the “Faves” option. Also, none of the users tried the “Load more classes…” or “Looking for more classes?” option, which suggest they only want to see their immediately upcoming class. Can just show the upcoming class synced from Blackboard.
• Improve the floor plan interaction — Making it clearer which seats are taken/available would be better for the users. One suggestion is to make the available seats colored in the default setting and not simply white.
• Privacy — Users want to determine themselves what information is publicly available  (like who is sitting in what seat). This why the blackboard option was not popular
• Feasibility — Need to consider how to effectively get the building plans for all the lecture halls. Do we personally go out to check where the outlets are? Need to find efficient way or if there are already available resources (online floor plans?).
• Enforce usage — From the user input, it seems like the best way to ensure that seats aren’t unfairly taken is if the app integrates with the course as a way to take attendance for the professors. This would mean that the administration needs to be consulted about the possibility of this app being approved and used by the university.
• Consider other applications — Amy brought up how this application would be very useful for taking exams and honor code enforcement. However, how often do honor code violations occur? Cost-benefit analysis for having this option need to be conducted and evaluated.
• Safety — How would this application impact students who bike or skateboard? This may encourage unsafe cellphone usage. May consider a way to reserve a seat using voice (calling a specific phone number).

Observations
Over the course of 30 minutes before a lecture, I sat in the back of the hall and took notes on the various activities that students engaged in after entering the hall while paying special attention to the transitions between different tasks. Out of the 25 students I observed entering the hall, I took an interest in three students taking reviewing their notes from their paper notebooks for the course before the professor had arrived. Almost everyone else was on their laptops or conversing with each other. The people using laptops mainly used them to check email or to use Facebook. Otherwise, students talked among themselves before class started. It did strike me odd that students would not take the time before class to prepare for the lecture that would come ahead. Yet, the students that used their notebooks to review notes before class did not do so on their computers, but rather through paper.

During a period of time before another class, I observed a professor reviewing printed, letter-sized pictures of students in class while writing down names next to each student. He had taken pictures before a previous lecture and was trying to match the faces to the pictures found on Blackboard. However, it appeared tedious and inconvenient to print the pictures and write down each person’s name.

Brainstormed Ideas
Worked with Thomas Troungchao
1. Taking notes from students and converting them to flash cards for review
2. A seamless interface for reading other people’s discussion posts on Blackboard
3. A mobile/tablet application for professors to learn names of their students with pictures
4. A tool for students to input pressing questions for the professor before class
5. An app to remind when to leave for class based on where you are
6. Notification of when/where your next class is
7. Class-wide tron
8. Automate web-browsing/email-checking routine
9. App for summarized versions of class readings
10. Listening to transcribed notes while walking to class
11. After class, lecture rating system
12. An app that provides a bio for guest lecturers
13. Showing pictures of Princeton
14. Encouraging messages
15. Provide showtimes

The 2 Prototypes
– (3) The mobile/tablet application for professors to learn the names of their students provides a better solution to a current problem found during observations.
– (9) Students do not use laptops to prepare for class during the ten minutes before class, but having an app that provides summarized versions of the readings provides eases the process of preparation for class while reducing the potential to get distracted.

Class Name Tool
This mobile/tablet application helps professors learn their students names by having a picture-tagging ability that combines information from Blackboard with pictures of students during class. The professor would take pictures before lecture and later associate each face with a name. Professors also have the ability to take notes about the students.

Class Prep Tool
This web application provides an easier way for students to prepare for class by reducing the friction of doing the readings encouraging students to write summaries of assigned readings for the entire class. Doing assigned readings would be simplified by having all the readings in a series sliding panels versus the old clunky method of navigating multiple depths of URLs. This is meant to serve people who prefer the convenience of paper, but also to provide a better solution to laptop users for preparing for class.

User Testing
I tested the prototype with 3 students either before or after their classes. At the beginning of user testing, I explained the premise of the project, described the purpose of the prototype, and asked the user to interact with my prototype. In order to avoid biasing the testing, I explicitly avoided telling the user what he or she could or could not touch.

Insights from User Testing
– Make clear the distinction between the readings’ authors and the students writing the summaries
– Clarify or rework the interface for scrolling among the summaries of the readers
– One user was against the idea of having the announcements on the homepage of the app as it hinted that it was too similar to Blackboard.
– Make sure there’s a clear distinction between the app and Blackboard. It’s supposed to be complementing Blackboard, not replace it.
– Expand or change the date format of the class date menu in order to prevent confusion over usage.

Observations:
Observation 1:
I observed Emily Rogers, a student of COS 126, in the waiting period right before COS 126 class.
-She spent the 10 minutes working on her homework assignment using her laptop.
-She asked her nearby friend for help with answering questions.
-Her friend gave what seems to have been an unsatisfactory answer on one of the questions.
-She then looked through previous lecture slides and google.
-I later confirmed that she was confused about what a library function of StdDraw did in Java.
-I asked why she didn’t post on piazza. She said she didn’t think her question was important enough to make an entire post about.
-Opportunities for improvement:
An interface through which students can ask questions without feeling guilty about bothering anyone. Something less formal than piazza.
An interface through which students can interact with all the students in the class, not just the ones they are sitting next to.
An interface that makes it easier to search past lecture slides for specific information.

Observation 2:
I observed Professor Douglas Clark, lecturer of COS 126, in the waiting period right before COS 126 class.
-He literally sat in a chair and drank water from a water bottle for 10 minutes.
-No interaction with the rest of the class.
-Classroom projector is unutilized aside from displaying the first slide of his lecture.
-Opportunities for improvement:
Huge opportunity to create an interface to get the professor engaged with the rest of the students. Perhaps a chat room or game – a way for the professor to answer questions, interacting, or supplying information that he thinks is interesting.

Observation 3:
I observered Sachin Ravi who is preceptor of COS 423 in the waiting period right before COS 423 precept.
-He spent the first four minutes preparing the blackboard by writing out problems and drawing diagrams.
-He spent the remaining six minutes looking at the COS 423 textbook.
-I later confirmed with him that when he was looking at the textbook, he was reviewing the material that he was about to teach.
-No interaction with the rest of the class
-Opportunities for improvement:
Interface to make preparing the classroom easier
Application to help review materials quickly
Application to help get preceptors get engaged with the rest of the class

Brainstormed Ideas:
1. “Previously On…” app that supplies the key points of last lecture’s material.
2. “Textbook Sparknotes” app that summarizes textbook information for students who didn’t do the required reading yet.
3. Sleep helper mobile app that plays lullabies or white noise to help you sleep and rings an alarm when class starts.
4. Class-wide online multiplayer game to help students get to know each other.
5. Free food app that provides listings of free food on campus in case one wants a quick bite.
6. Class-wide jukebox where students submit and vote on songs to be played in the classroom.
7. Practice Test mobile app game where students are drilled with previous test questions.
8. “Why am I learning this?” app where professor posts some real-world applications of lecture material.
9. Class-wide piazza style chat room for posting questions in and general chat; displayed on projector as well.
10. School-wide gossip feed for enhancing sense of student community.
11. Mobile app that finds where your friends are on campus so you can walk to class with them.
12. School-wide feed where club advertisements and activities are posted to attract participants or new members.
13. Map of campus mobile app that provides the best route to the classroom destination and estimated time to get there.
14. Class-wide penpal app that matches you up with a free student so that you can chat with each other.
15. News headline gathering app that learns what news you are interested in and gathers the latest headlines suited for you.

Selected Ideas:
1. I chose the class-wide piazza style chat room because it has appeal to students, TA’s, and professors in enhancing class community and also makes good use of the classroom projector which is often unutilized in the waiting time.
2. I also chose the sleep helper app because it is personally the one I would find most useful, as I am sleep deprived on weekdays and would love a refreshing 10 minute nap before lectures but cannot fall asleep when people are talking all around me.

Prototypes:
Chat Room Prototype:

-Classroom usage of my prototype
Top Screen: classroom before my prototype is used. Student is unable to get the answer to his question. Notice projector screen displays nothing.
Bottom Screen: classroom after my prototype is used. Chat room and questions are displayed using the projector. Student is able to get the answer to his question by asking the entire class his question.

-Laptop usage of my prototype
Top Screen: anybody can use the chat room of a class by going to the instructional page and looking for the link to it.
Middle Screen: the main screen. The screen is divided into a top half and a bottom half. In the bottom half is a general chat where anyone in the class can just post at will. In the top half is a list of questions. Anyone can post a new question. Next to the questions are indicators that mark whether they are resolved or not.
Bottom Screens: resulting screens from clicking on the questions in the main screen. The top half will turn into a chat room dedicated to discussing the question that you clicked on. The asker of the question can press the “resolve” button in the top left corner (underneath the back and forward buttons) when he feels he has found a satisfactory answer. The general chat remains in the bottom half of the screen.

Sleep Helper Prototype:

Top Screen:the main screen. When the user opens this mobile app, the app will automatically note the nearest end to a Princeton waiting time and set an alarm to go off at that time. The current time and the alarm time are both displayed at the top of the screen. The user can exit the app and cancel the alarm by pressing “cancel” button at the bottom. The user can either press “play lullaby” or “play white noise” to have the app display a list of lullabies or white noises to select.
Middle Screens:resulting screens from pressing either “play lullaby” or “play white noise” in the main screen. Displays a list of lullabies or white noises that the user can select. Current and alarm time are still displayed at top.
Bottom Screen:resulting screen from when you click on a lullaby or a white noise. The app will play the selected lullaby/white noise while showing a visualizer. The lullaby/white noise loops until alarm goes off. Current and alarm time are still displayed at top.
Bottom-Right Screen:resulting screen from when the alarm goes off. The user can turn off the alarm and exit the app by pressing the “turn off” button.

User Testing:
User Testing 1 – Brian Hwang:

Brian Huang is initially a little confused by the layout of my interface.

Tested during Princeton waiting time. Followed the link from the instructional page. Initially confused by the main screen. First thing he said was, “what is this?” while pointing at the general chat. I then had to explain the top half was for questions and the bottom half was a general chat. He then clicked the question “What is printf?” He was a little confused again by the resulting screen. I told him that the top half was now a chat room for talking about the question, “What is printf?”, He mentioned that this design would make it hard for somebody new to enter the chat room of a resolved question and find the answer. It would also be fairly hard for the question asker to figure out what is the correct answer amongst proposed solutions.

User Testing 2 – Saswathi Natta

Saswathi Natta finds the navigating with my interface intuitive.

Tested during Princeton waiting time. Followed the link from the instructional page. Was also initially confused that the screen was split half into a questions section and half into a general chat. The first thing she wanted to type into General Chat was “This professor is so…”, then she stopped. She then said it will be hard to prevent students from abusing the chat rooms and misbehaving by posting nonsense or harmful words. She then considered that this probably won’t be a problem at Princeton University since all the students are upstanding citizens. She then clicked on the questions and said the rest was fine. She mentioned the navigation was intuitive and had no problems.

User Testing 3 – Reid Oda:

Reid Oda hanging out with the general chat. Looking at my prototype from a teaching assistant’s perspective.

Provided the view of a teaching instructor. Followed link from instructional page. He surprisingly wanted to mainly hang out in the general chat. He wanted the question and answering part of the app to be more student driven to encourage discussion. He said he would appreciate it if there were a way to see if all the students were having trouble resolving any particular question. He also mentioned it would be cool if instructors could create fake accounts and post questions to routinely poll the students’ understandings of material. He also mentioned that it will probably be essential to allow students to be anonymous to encourage free discussion. Eventually clicked on “What is printf?” question. Immediately noted that there needs to be a way to have good answers be marked.

Insight:
-There are no significant navigational problems with my interface.
-stackexchange.com mechanism of voting for an answer to a question is needed in order to allow for the correct answer to a question to be endorsed. It is also necessary for making the correct answer quickly accessible to people that have just entered the chat room.
-Some kind of filter for bad language may need to be implemented to prevent profanity. At the same time users need to have the option to post anonymously in order to encourage truly free discussion. The best way to approach this is probably to adopt piazza’s mechanism where students may be viewed as anonymous to students but not anonymous to instructors. In this manner, they can freely discuss, and there is accountability built in the case that a student misbehaves. Instructors can also post questions anonymously to poll the students’ understanding of a topic.
-There should be a mechanism to see how long a question has been unresolved for. This would then provide feedback to the teaching staff. If a question is unresolved for very long, it may reveal weaknesses in how materials are being taught. I should also have students login with their netid’s to enter the chat so only students within the class can join.
-The most common cause of confusion over my interface is the use of the top half for questions and answers and the bottom half for general chat. This should be somehow unified into a single chat room. It will, however, be hard to keep the questions from being lost in the sea of text. My next idea is, thus, to have one big chat room where there is a bot routinely reposting questions. Anyone can communicate with the bot to make a new question, view proposed answers to a question, vote for an answer to a question, and propose an answer to a question.
-More testing with my new ideas are needed.

Observation

For my observations, I used several locations and several different classes. I think that it was important to observe different types of students, as it is possible that their habits might vary, especially between sciences and humanities students. Here is what I observed:

• Before SOC 242 – McCosh 46 – One girl was entering events from her laptop into her phone. I think it was into Google calendar, though I couldn’t be certain. She caught me looking at her phone, so I had to be less obvious and get more of a sweeping view of the room. I saw another student (male) just finish up the header for his notes today and begin playing with his phone. He was behind me so I couldn’t see what he was doing, though I am assuming it wasn’t work (he didn’t look terribly focused on it).
• Before CLA 216 – McCosh 28 – I observed two students sitting and talking to each other. Both were holding cups of coffee (Small World) and had their notebooks out. Each notebook had been titled for the day’s notes.
• Before COS 226 (Precept) – McCosh 62 – I saw one guy just sitting and staring aimlessly with his notebook out. He looked prepared for class, but did not appear to have anything to do. Another student (male) was reading a webcomic on his laptop and definitely seemed engaged in it. I saw an open Word document on his taskbar, which I thought might be his notes for the class. This was confirmed when he switched to it when the teacher came in and went to the front of the class.
• When late for one of my own classes (I was biking), I passed another student biking along at high speeds in the opposite direction. I assume that he was also late. It was then that I began thinking about how much more dangerous biking became when you were in a hurry.

Brainstorming

I did most of my brainstorming on my own. However, thanks go to Deanna Zhu and Zak Yaffe for help with some of the ideas. They were working (on other assignments) when I was doing this, but provided some ideas when I prompted them with questions about what they would like to do between class. Here are the ideas I came up with:

1. A free daily song download for students on campus to listen to and talk about
2. App for students to sign-in to at lecture that matches them with somebody random to talk to
3. A Princeton trivia game that you can accumulate points in for prizes
4. An app that calculates your position and how long it will take to get to the next class
5. An auto-header for notes – maybe some kind of label maker
6. A collapsible clip-on warming holder for coffee cups on those tiny McCosh desks via USB
7. Princeton-themed coloring sheets + crayons in classrooms – students upload designs
8. Add-on to the P-meals app that allows you to check-in where/when you are going to a meal
9. A four-square type app for areas around campus
10. A Sporcle app for important terms in a class. You enter them, then it quizzes you before class.
11. A collaborative game that people play against others in class w/ results on a projector
12. A quick exercise program app, core exercises, push-ups – target muscles without sweating
13. In the vein of the above – a stretching routine/yoga app customized for short durations < 5 minutes
14. An app that automated your laptop routine for class – turn off wifi, open preferred note app, etc.
15. A thesis research app – limits survey length to ~5 minutes, makes it easy to do between classes
16. For teachers – an app that identifies students when they come in the classroom

Chosen Ideas

I really like the Sporcle app idea (10) because it will help students learn key terms for their class with quick, repeated memorization, while taking a minimum amount of otherwise wasted time.

I also like the Sign-in app (2) because it will connect students and encourage them to talk before class starts and can help people (especially freshmen) make new friends.

 Prototypes

I first prototyped the Princeton Sporcle App. Basically, it allowed you to set up classes and fill them with a list of terms, which you could then be quizzed on.  Below is a picture of the first version.

This is an overview of the app layout. The main screen is at the top with three rows that are the three paths through the app.

I used post-it notes so that I could stick them to a phone screen for the demos. After my first two demos with this one, I had some time so I added a few of the features that the my first two users requested, as well as some error screens to account for situations that I hadn’t thought of at first. First is the enhanced layout, then a gallery of the different individual screens:

This my enhanced version, laid out in the same fashion as the first one.

Here is my other prototype. This is of the sign-in and meet other people in your class app.

Overview of the layout of the app.

Here are the close-ups of the screens:

Demo Responses

I first tried out my application on Deanna Zhu ’15, who is undecided, but on the pre-med track. She was able to use it, with some prompting from me as well as some delays as I filled in some information that she “entered”. Deanna questioned the point of the application. Essentially, she didn’t think it would be all that useful for students to just memorize lists of terms for a class. She would prefer to use an app (like the many already out there) that would utilize do-it-yourself flashcards. When I asked for criticism directed at the user interface and layout, Deanna provided some very helpful feedback. A list of problems and possibilities:

• No home button
• “Type Name:” – should say something more descriptive
• Could possibly link it to blackboard – allow students to share lists and terms
• Create sub-topics for the various classes
• Show a timer on the quiz function

Some pictures of her using the app:

Beginning to use my app

Adding a class

My next user was Kevin Zhang ’15, who undecided, but considering a COS certificate. He was very enthusiastic about using the app, patiently waiting as I added text to some of the screens based on his input and working through the somewhat cumbersome navigation my app had. I saw even more need for the home button that Deanna suggested in my first demo. When prompted for feedback, he said he liked the simple, clean interface that it was currently laid out in. There was nothing to distract the user, even though some things were a bit ambiguous or confusing. He appreciated the ease of set-up and how it didn’t require much of a time investment to have a list ready to be quizzed on. This contrasted a bit with Deanna who thought that it was too simple and didn’t do enough, which would increase the time investment necessary to begin using it. His suggestions included:

• A home button
• More navigation buttons – one to take you from the Add Class page to the Add Terms page and one to take you from the Add Terms page to the Quiz setup page.
• A finish button for the Quiz page

My final user was Zak Yaffe ’15, who was a chemistry pre-med student. He also was enthusiastic about testing the app, even though he had studying to do. He seemed to have the easiest time using the app, probably because of the improvements I made to it after the last demo. His most important suggestion was to make a database of everyone’s lists, which would allow everyone to immediately begin using it. In this scenario he would like to be able to rate lists and find them by navigating through categories – like “Sciences” or “Chemistry”. Zak’s overall impression was that he would use it if there were lists available to download, but he was not sure how much he would use it if he had to make the lists himself. He also suggested the following:

• Suggested that the Word Added Success screen include the word that you added
• The “Time” selector needs to be more clearly marked as a timer for the quiz
• Also thought sub-classes would be a good idea

Starting to use the app

Starting a new quiz.

Insights

I learned a lot by having other users try out my app. One of the biggest problems my first two users had was navigating through the screens. I improved this with my enhanced version by adding a home button and the “Add Terms” and “Start Quiz” buttons to the relevant screens. Another important problem I didn’t think about was how clear (or unclear!) the titles and instructions for various functions were. Some were less than ideal and would need to be improved greatly for my next version of this product. I also learned that not everyone will like your idea or will think that it is useful. Deanna’s very critical feedback made me reconsider how usable or influential this app would be on studying habits. I would now think that it would be important to add a definition feature, so you could remind yourself of what particular terms mean when you forget the definition, but not the term. Zak’s idea for making a larger database with user-uploaded content seemed to have a lot of potential and I would definitely try to make that happen for my next version. Overall, I believe that this app has potential and would not be terribly difficult to implement successfully.

Assignment 2-Paper prototype testing

John Subosits

Observations

The activities of people in lecture hall between classes can be divided into three categories.  Some pursued academic activities by looking over the syllabus for that class or doing homework for another class.  Social activities involved talking with neighbors, texting, and using Facebook.  The last class, which I will term passive content acquisition, consists of activities such as reading the paper, checking email, watching sports highlights, and browsing Facebook.  About 3.5 minutes before class is scheduled to start, students start to stream in and the noise level increases substantially.  The professor typically arrives about 3 minutes before class.  The professor spent the 3 minutes organizing his lecture notes.  One student was intently completing exercises for Japanese class.  Another was reading the front page of the WSJ.  To me, this suggests that professors already make good use of their time before lecture, but students are looking for ways to be productive.  Many of my ideas aim to make that 10 minute window useful while others are designed to make the 10 minutes a break to mentally prepare students for lecture.

Brainstorming

1. Video selector searches Youtube for interesting videos of appropriate length
2. App to allow the Professor to remotely show A/V relevant to the upcoming lecture
3. App to allow students to submit questions anonymously (mobile, agile Piazza)
4. Scheduling app meet friends for meals, study sessions, or acquire party supplies
5. Distributed computing so people can nibble away at major problem in spare time( reCapcha)
6. Prayer/meditiation app that uses active noise cancelling to give you peace and quiet
7. Email sorting app that forces you to respond, delete, or store in a folder emails from your inbox.
8. App that does the same thing with social media friends or documents on your computer
9. Disable electronics so that you have to have a real conversation with person next to you
10. Aggregator that shows new emails, tweets, Facebook news feed, and blogs in one place
11. Remote ordering for takeout and dine in lunches to ease between class rush
12. Use hardware to assess and track physical and mental state (blood pressure, HR, blood glucose)
13. Quiz yourself using professor, TA, or student created questions (flash cards)
14. Short tutorials to teach you a random skill (knots, exercises, etc.)
15. Vocabulary booster. Could also be used for equations
    1. Track students movements with GPS so that classrooms can be optimally scheduled to minimize travel time

Selections

I chose to prototype the Youtube video finder because I feel that there is a lot of excellent content on Youtube, but better tools are needed to filter what you want from the junk.  I also like the forced organization apps ideas 7 and 8 above because I often will not respond to emails immediately, and extra Facebook friends and documents make it hard to find what you need.

Prototypes

Both apps have simple prompt based interfaces.  The Youtube video finder asks you what you are interested in and presents a list of your courses for that semester as well as a “something else” button.  “Something else” leads to a list of broad categories and potentially some narrower user-defined categories.  Once a selection is made, the user is asked how much time they have and several ranges are presented.  Finally, a popular video, based on views and like/dislike ratio, of the appropriate length and content is shown.  This app could both be used to pique interest in a topic before class and to take a mental break.

2 screens of the video finder

The email, document, friend clean up app asks the user which of the 3 they want to organize.  When given an email from the inbox, the user may respond, delete, or save the email.  Save presents a list of archival folders while delete allows the user to have the email deleted immediately or automatically after a set amount of time.  Selecting friends brings up a random Facebook friend.  The user must decide to keep or delete the friend.  If the keep button is held quickly, that person will come up less often in the future.  Documents work like the friend sorter.

2 screens of organizer

The friend and email sorting screens

Feedback

Thank you to Alice Fuller, Chiraag Galaiya, and Katie Gnostic for helping to test the prototypes.  Despite little explanation of the purpose of the prototypes or goals of the applications, users seemed fairly comfortable with them.  One suggestion for the Youtube video sorter was to give the user an initial choice between their classes, other courses, and other topics since people might be interested in their friend’s classes.  Some confusion arose as to when the video finder no longer required user input, so perhaps it should close automatically when the video is over and it is time for class to start.  Enthusiasm for the video sorter varied depending on the user’s general Youtube usage.  However, when people who did not often use Youtube were asked if they would use it more often if it were easier to find quality content, they answered, somewhat predictably, that they would.

User confusion.  Perhaps it would have been better if the video actually played.

Testing of the document and email friend clean up app revealed that an option to send unwanted documents to an external storage would be helpful.  It was also noticed that there was a lack of back or undo delete buttons to correct mistakes.  Some testers were confused as to why emails could be marked for automatic deletion in the future as well as deleted immediately.  People were generally less enthusiastic about this application.

A confusing and possibly unnecessary menu.

Insights

This exercise reinforced two obvious lessons.  Users do not always find the necessary path as easy to find as the designer expects, and users need a way to correct erroneous or unintended interactions.  The absence of back buttons to allow users to correct pressing the wrong button is an obvious example of the second point.  User uncertainty about which menu choice to select arose in part from a lack of a clear task since users were given software to test rather than choosing that software to accomplish a task they had in mind.  Future tests of this sort will address this.  Expectations about menu choices and the ordering of options are important.  Paper prototyping seems to be a good way to get feedback on this subject.

1. Observations

I had the opportunity to observe people before classes of varying sizes – before a small seminar (COS598), a medium-sized class (COS435), a large lecture (COS436), and a huge lecture (MUS103). All of my observations were in the classrooms or directly outside of them before classes.

1.1 General Observations

• In general, students are either having conversations with other students or are doing something on their laptop/phone.
• Before the seminar class, most students are chatting with each other. Topics of conversation generally revolved around the papers to be discussed in that lecture. Essentially the entire class knows each other, since all of them are members of the graphics lab, but in previous seminar classes people generally gain the same familiarity to be able to strike up casual or academic conversations with most others.
• In the medium-sized class, very few people are talking with others. Most are on their laptops (the desk space and convenient outlets in the Friend classrooms make this very convenient).
• In HCI, many people come to class with their friend groups and often chat with them on the way in and after sitting down. It appears that the popularity of the class means that most people are friends with some number of others in COS436.
• In the huge class, it appears to be difficult to chat because of the acoustics of the room – people seem to stick in groups of two or three instead. There appear to be a lot more untalkative “singles” compared to HCI; many have their phones out while others have paper and pen out for notes (I assume these are mostly studious freshmen…). There are fewer laptops than I expect in a class of that size, perhaps due to fear of the professor.

1.2 Individual Observations

1. COS435 (medium-sized class): I observed an individual who I was not acquainted with. He entered the classroom and went to the same seat that he usually sat in (IIRC), conveniently in front of me. After opening up his laptop, he made sure to plug it into an outlet (this reminded me of the tiny desks and lack of power in lecture halls – the small auditorium and the Friend classrooms are very convenient in comparison). This individual checked their email (apparently Princeton Gmail), glanced at Facebook, and then opened up what appeared to be code for an assignment. I also noticed his neighbor take out a physical mouse and start playing Starcraft right after the professor arrived; his game continued into the lecture (?!).
2. MUS103 (Huge class in McCosh): A girl carrying a salad in a plastic container (from Frist?) came in (alone) and sat down in front of where I was sitting (and left one seat between her and the next person over; apparently the movie theater law of “at least one seat between separate parties” holds in class too). She checked her phone while eating the salad; I couldn’t tell what she was doing, although based on her hands I assume she sent at least one text. Right before the lecture started, she got up and retrieved one of the handouts at the front of the classroom (did she forget it or just have her hands full?)
3. COS598 (seminar-sized): Although most interactions before this seminar were as described above, there was one interesting case. I observed a female grad student who was new to the department who took the time before class to find someone not already engaged in a conversation and introduce herself (I was one of the ones she accosted). She asked whether I was a graduate student, what I thought of the class so far, and we discussed some of the technicalities of the readings. Through our short conversation she mentioned that she was a grad student who had just switched from ELE to the COS PIXL group and wanted to get to know people. I then watched her go off to introduce herself to another graduate student (she did this twice more the next class, but after that she stopped – I assume she had met everyone by then). This special effort to get to know everyone personally made a huge impact on me, as I had never encountered someone who explicitly went to every person in the class for introductions. However, I think that since it was a seminar class, she probably would have gotten to know everyone eventually. I imagine that her main goal was to meet everyone in the research group rather than the class, but it still inspired my many ideas involving giving people contexts to meet others in a more practical way for a larger class.

Brainstorming

Shared brainstorming with Connie Wan (cwan)

1. Traffic Light Crossing Planning Aid – Tracks status of the crossings at Washington and in front of Forbes.
2. Say hi to the camera – Like security cameras at store entrances, let people wave at them to amuse themselves.
3. Paperwork area – Get handouts, sign in, vote on class polls, etc. in one location
4. Music Areas – Let people plug in their computers/iPods into communal (directional?) speakers
5. Phone game XL – Put large screens somewhere in the classroom to make phone games a social activity.
6. Phone silencer – Deactivate/silence phones during class automatically
7. Bike rental – Have stations around campus with bikes that you can sign out to get to classes faster.
8. Make-a-friend phone game – Adapt social mobile games to look for people in the same classroom.
9. Classwide opt-in games – Classwide trivia game that everyone in the class can join into (like the Delta in-flight trivia game).
10. Crowd Traffic Analysis – Tell people which seats/entrances are crowded so they can choose which entrance to go into.
11. Food Smell Diffuser/Eliminator – Show off your delicious food by wafting the smell over the entire classroom. Or, eliminate the smell of obnoxiously pungent food.
12. Informal Discussion Organizer – Share your informal conversation topics so that people can find you and join in
13. Student(s) of the day – Introduce the entire class to each other by randomly selecting people to record and play a short 20 second video of themselves.
14. Whiteboard/Graffiti area – Put whiteboards on some of (all) the walls for graffiti, psets, etc.
15. Electronic device charging – map all the locations of the nearest outlets in the classroom and whether they’re in use or not
16. Announcement/spam board – Post event announcements, cool links, lost & founds, restricted to the ten minutes before class
17. Fun floor area – Make interactive floor tiles or simple wall touch gadgets for amusement on the way to class (inspired by Disneyworld lineup areas)
18. Cooperative puzzle – Have the entire class work together on some multipart challenge (e.g. sporcle).

Paper Prototypes

My first choice for paper prototyping is the Informal Discussion Organizer (#12). I think it would be the most concretely useful, especially in classes like HCI where informal, creative discussion can introduce you to ideas, viewpoints, and systems that you might not have heard of otherwise.

Home screen for the “Conversation Finder”, aka Informal Discussion Organizer. Major features:

• The current class and classroom (detected via your schedule OR through which access point you’re accessing wifi from)
• A list of current conversation topics
• A button allowing you to add a discussion/topic

When you click on one of the topics, it lists where the discussion is taking place and who started the conversation (and optionally who else is taking part).

When the “Add Topic” button is clicked on the main screen, you get brought to a simple form that lets you enter a subject, choose from a list of locations, and optionally indicate who else is discussing (your name would be auto-filled upon posting). You can post it by clicking the green button, or cancel by clicking the red one.

My second choice for paper prototyping is the Student of the Day. Every Princeton student is a fascinating person, and I think giving people the opportunity to get to know people in their classes is valuable both for social and academic reasons.

The Student of the Day (currently a generically named individual) displays the name and a short (under 30 seconds) video clip introducing themselves with whatever they can fit in the allotted time. Their netid is also displayed in case you want to contact them later. Underneath, a history of previous videos can be viewed based on date. (Names are random generic names)

At some point during the course, the app will select you as the Student of the Day. This message will show up prompting you to record your short clip.

Clicking the button will bring you to a camera recording interface, with a timer underneath showing you how long your video is.

User Testing

1. Teodor Georgiev: This participant, after looking over the home screen of the app, decided to browse the current topics and decided to “run off and join the conversation”. This was great because they did not spend long on the app and got the relevant information for them to run off and start talking. When I had an accomplice start a conversation with him (and hint that it might be of interest to other people) he tried out the Add Topic page. Unfortunately, he felt that the process was a little bit tedious. Furthermore, he said afterwards probably wouldn’t have thought to open it up without the obvious prompting, and even if he did it was a little inconvenient to think up and type in the topic.
   
   

   This user spent a bit of time looking at and analyzing every part of the interface, but after examining everything and getting “back in character” he decided to “go find one of the conversations” right after viewing it.

2. Brenda Hiller: Like the first participant, the user was able to use the main interface to find a conversation of interest very rapidly. In contrast to the first participant, this user was very excited to be able to add their topic and was very interested in advertising their conversation to the class. She did not think that the fluidness of the workflow was a significant downside, although when questioned further she did admit having it more streamlined would help a lot.
   
   

   This user checked a topic of interest, and went off to find the conversation right after taking the first image. The second image shows a conversation an accomplice struck up with the user, and the user added the conversation with little prompting.

3. David Bieber: This user tried to click everything on the app, which caused a lot of confusion when things did not work (either not implemented in the prototype or not intended to be interactive). However after exhausting the possible click locations, the user decided to go and join a conversation. Upon looking at the options for adding a topic, he was confused by the options presented for locations because he had misconceptualized the use of the app – he had thought it was a general conversation finder, rather than only for a single class, at a specific time, and even after an explanation he gave up since he was in a rush.
   
   

   The user is vigorously swiping and pressing buttons on the left, and disappointed when only a few locations actually do something. On the right, they are confronted with a list of location options that they did not understand.

I think this study may be a little bit skewed, since it was obvious through the app that I intended the user to participate in conversations. However, it seems likely for at least one of the users tested that they probably would have just stayed on their laptop alone, rather than actively seek out conversations.

Insights

Having a list of conversations going on in a handy place is very valuable to people – my participants rapidly pulled out the app, found what was going on, and went off to talk. Like Google, we want people to spend as little time in our app as possible, and it was successful in this regard. However, it is clear that having people populate the list of conversation topics will be very difficult, especially given the already short waiting time before class. This app would definitely have to make the topic creation workflow nearly instant, or even automatic (picking up group conversations, extracting a topic, and posting them automatically). One interesting thing I noted was that people would only open up conversation info for topics they were interested in – they would click a topic of interest, determine where it was, and go find the people. Nobody opened the info for a conversation they were not interested in. This suggests that the topic description must be chosen extra carefully, since, if a larger list of topics was in the app, people would want to filter conversations more carefully.

Observations:

For the observations portion of this assignment, I both observed students in the classes I went to and interviewed a couple of my friends. My most extensive passive observation was during the previous HCI lecture when I got to class about 10-15 minutes early. The last class was still leaving, and so a number of us including Professor Fiebrink were standing outside waiting. Being someone who usually barely gets to class in time, I was surprised by the number of students who prefer to arrive with time to spare. I noticed a student sitting on the side resting his eyes and two students leaning against the wall and taking, but mostly, students were on their phones. The motif of electronically connected students was observed even further after getting into class. A number of students sat down with friends or at some distance from others they weren’t especially familiar with and started to pull out their notebooks or computers. Students tended to converse with one another, look over notes for this (or sometimes another) class, or go on the Internet (Facebook, Reddit, email, cellphone games, etc) until the lecture started.

In interviewing friends, I tried to talk to those with different general habits. One of them told me that she usually prefers to get to class 5 to 7 minutes early and uses the time to get stuff out and make sure that she has the needed binder/documents ready. She said that she generally tries to make productive use of the rest of the time to check her email and respond as necessary. If she doesn’t have emails, she said she would then either read a book or spend time on Facebook, etc. On the other side of this, another person I interviewed said that he generally is the type of person who gets to class barely on time or often a bit late, especially in the mornings. Specifically, he says that while he would ideally prefer to avoid the awkwardness of walking in late, he always mis-budgets time, wants to leave on time, but gets caught up in something and then doesn’t. Interestingly, he said that if he is less than 5 minutes late, he doesn’t feel too bad. If he gets in later than that, he often just sits there for the first few minutes of class trying to stay as unnoticed as possible. From the interviews, I also got some interesting information about things that some professors have done in a low tech way during these wait times. I found that some professors play music, put up notes that are a review of the previous lecture on a projector or the board, or start to pass around a sign in sheet.

Brainstorming (Worked with Vivian Qu):

1. “Morning announcements” style information about campus activities, broadcasted on projector in the lecture hall prior to the start of lectures
2. “Check-in” application using phone GPS to replace sign-in sheets
3. Q&A mobile app forum, using voting to choose the most relevant questions for classes
4. Provide feedback to inquiries the professor has, i-clicker style (results shown on projector in real-time)
5. Application that allows students to compete against each other in educational games such as flashcard matching that are related to the class
6. “Popcorn” questions — professors can pick random people to answer questions to facilitate class discussions; can make it so that all the students log in to an app which randomly selects one of the users to answer a question / provide feedback
7. A mobile app where you can check the upcoming deadlines for a class (assignments, projects, etc), shown in a calendar or task list
8. Mobile application that shows you which seats are full as a lecture starts to fill up (hopefully would serve as motivation to not go into a class late), and can see where are friends are sitting
9. Mobile calendar which shows campus events daily which also shows how many of your friends are going, how many tiger tickets are left
10. Mobile application that combines class schedule data + lecture room location to see which of your friends have class near you so you can walk there together
11. A discussion board viewable on your mobile phone where students post what they learned from the previous lecture instead of the professor posting the content
12. Audit Course Recommender — have extra time in between two classes, then finds nearby lectures that are starting and can go in and listen for a while
13. Application that reminds you how much time needed to walk to class from current location, and reminds you when to leave (if you need to speed up or can slow down)
14. Grade calculator — takes the median/mean/grade data from blackboard and instantly computes a score. Also can project the scores needed on future assignments to achieve the desired grade.
15. Map my schedule — at the beginning of the semester, it’s annoying to keep looking up where your next class is so this app will plan out a route for you through the whole day!
16. Collaborative classroom playlist application for entertainment before class
17. Collaborative easy to use music generation program (maybe everyone gets different instrument?)
18. Live lecture broadcast for those enrolled in class so you don’t have to get out of bed in the morning

Favorite Ideas:

• Get-to-Class: Application that reminds you how much time is needed to walk to class from current location, and reminds you when to leave
  • I chose this idea largely because, being someone who struggles to get to class on time, it would be personally beneficial to me and there really is no precedent for such a system.
• Classroom Games: App that allows students to compete against each other in educational games such as flashcard matching that are related to the class
  • This idea appealed to me because it seems that students are generally pretty connected to the Internet almost all the time, and as several are already playing mobile games before class, I thought this could be channeled towards more productive gameplay.

Prototypes:

Get-to-Class!

The home page has a pretty clean interface.

First time you click enroll, you must search classes to add.

Possible choices populate as you type in a class name.

After choosing all of your classes, need to press submit.

Check screen for enrolled classes.

First time you choose “Set Alarm,” none have been set.

Added an info page about setting alarms on basis of first test subject’s confusion.

Choose class to add an alarm for.

Edit settings for alarm.

“Set Alarm” page after alarms have been set.

“How Far Am I” page caused some confusion in initial tests (described below).

Classroom Games

The homepage lets you choose a game to play, the scoreboard, or the login page.

Login page with a simple interface.

Directions for the flashcard game.

Flashcard game interface.

Directions for the multiple choice game.

Multiple choice classroom game interface.

Directions for the game of concentration.

Interface for a game of concentration.

Scorecard page let’s you toggle between tabs and see your own score at the top.

Feedback:

From the first test, I found out about a couple of kinks that made the application a bit confusing to use. I was surprised to find that the subject found the “How far am I?” portion of the application confusing.  It wasn’t clear what the purpose was. From feedback at the end, I found that it would be useful to change the labels on the selection page to something on the lines of “Start Location” and “End Destination,” and maybe even change the name “How far am I?” to something on the lines of “Find Distance” or something else clearer. It was also unclear how the time alarm was to be set up. The app require an understanding of 3 time blocks – how early you want to leave, how much time it will take to get to class from where you are (implicit), and how early you want to get to class. This wasn’t originally made clear, and so, for future test subjects, I actually added a pop-up note the first time they tried to set a new alarm.

Note pops up when setting alarm to make the use of necessary fields clear to users.

I tested with two other subjects and as some of these points of confusion were cleared up, I mostly got more feedback about developing the application further. It was suggested, that I add reminders about assignment due dates. Instead of having people “Enroll” in classes, it was suggested that the app sync with SCORE to make the user experience less involved. People suggested that the app would mostly be used during the first week of classes or for morning classes. To adapt to this functionality, I was told to maybe allow people to allot time for breakfast, getting coffee or getting ready. One of the users suggested adding the ability to change settings about whether the user has a bike and about the user’s walking speed. My idea about an extension I had considered myself was also reinforced when one of the subjects suggested that I add a map that shows users the best path to class. Finally, as a less serious concern, I was told that I should add the tiger icon to the corner of all the pages because it was kind of cute.

Using the native keyboard to type in class preferences.

Users found use of the sliders and other common interactive aspects of the app to be pretty intuitive.

Insights:

I definitely see that adding the map with directions to the class is the first important development. It would definitely add to the user experience. More importantly, it would show users which path is being considered when calculating the time to get to class. Additionally, I think that it is valuable to sync to SCORE or even ICE. This would make it so that a user could download the app, log in and immediately start using it. I had my friends test out this app, and they had to sit down and go through the procedure. A general user, though, might be discouraged from using the app just because of the hassle of adding classes manually. In general, though, I was happy with the way in which users could mostly intuit how to use the app. I tried to use simple buttons, list and clear labels for the most part, which were similar to existing commonly used apps, so that this would be possible, and outside of the one or two concerns noted in feedback, users said that this was successfully achieved.