Canvas Student
UofT Quercus Online Learning App Update
UX Design · User Research · Usability Tests · Mobile
Overview
Team
Shiyi Yan, Yuwei Jiang, Runfei Wu, Sharon Yu, Yawen Xue, Lily Li
Sector
Student Life
My Roles
Conducted User Research, Data Analysis, Usability Testing, Prototyping
Timeline
Nov 2021 - Dec 2021 (2 months)
Client
University of Toronto Innovation Hub
Device
Mobile IOS
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Background
We collaborated with the University of Toronto Innovation Hub to enhance UofT students' learning experience during the pandemic. Through extensive research and analysis, we devised user experience (UX) solutions aimed at improving the online group collaboration experience on the Canvas Student App for UofT students.
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How?
01 PROBLEM STATEMENT
What can we do to enhance UofT students' learning experience during the pandemic?
02 RESEARCH
To better understand UofT students' pain points and needs, we have done
7 Literature Reviews
2 Competitive Analysis
30 Survey Responses
12 Semi-Structure Interviews
03 ANALYSIS
So, we have confirmed that students' most common pain points and needs in terms of their online learning experience during the pandemic is
Online Group Work
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We utilized Affinity Diagram to group and summarize the research results
Hear what students are saying about online group work...
"We don't have sufficient channels to know about other students when we take courses remotely. Thus, it can be hard to build trust and bonds during online group work."
"Nowhere shows other students' contact information and information about whether they are in a group or not, so we always waste a lot of time and effort on looking for contacts and reaching out to people who are already in a group."
"We need a unified official chatting platform only for school work so that we can separate our personal and academic life and avoid downloading too many social media apps."
"Some people do not finish their parts on time, so the rest of us need to do their parts. It is much more serious when working in a group remotely."
Based on students' common pain points and needs, we created a persona - Suo Yang to make further analysis easier.
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To better understand Suo's story, we used an empathy map to outline what she says, thinks, does and feels during the online group work.
04 IDEATION & PRIORITIZATION
Then, how to enhance Suo's online group working experience? Here are some ideas we brainstormed.
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We clustered and prioritized ideas in terms of their impact and feasibility.
As a result, we decided to implement the quick win and home run ideas, including shareable self-introduction, group status display, instant group communication system and progress tracking & reminding. Through these improvements, Suo Yang can
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reach out to suitable classmates with the knowledge of their availability and competency
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communicate with her group members securely on an official school platform with her academic and personal life separate
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check the responsibility and project progress of each group member to maximize team collaboration and ensure timely completion of the project
05 PROTOTYPES
Initial sketches
Mid-fi Prototypes
Before
UofT students don't have sufficient channels to know and connect with their classmates, so it is hard to build bonds and trust during remote group work.
After
Straightforward online self-introduction
Self-introduction with skill tags allows students to know their classmates better so that they can build trust and bonds during remote group work more easily.
Before
Students lack efficient channels to connect with their peers, resulting in wasted time searching for contacts and needing to download multiple social media apps for different group work.
After
Canvas Chat only for academic life
The chat function allows students to message their classmates directly through Canvas, simplifying the ways for students to connect and maintaining a clear separation between their personal and academic lives.
Before
Lack of transparency of group status when forming groups, so students waste a lot of time reaching out to professor and people who are already in a group
After
Clear group status display
Student availability and group status are transparent to students so that they can skip students who are already in a group while forming groups.
Students can view group details, request to join and change groups on their own without reaching out to professors.
Before
It was hard to track each individual's progress during remote group work and some students failed to deliver their work on time.
After
Easy progress tracking & reminder
Group members can check and share the to-do list within the group chat, facilitating progress tracking and serving as a reminder for fellow team members.
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Once students have completed their assigned sections, they can proceed to upload them. Other team members can view and comment.
Group members can create and assign tasks with task descriptions so that everyone is clear about their responsibilities.
06 Usability Tests & Next Step
User Feedback
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The skill tags have too many colours, making it distractive for me to read the text.
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Students should be able to edit or delete the tasks after these tasks are created.
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The Group status display doesn’t support multiple groups for a single class. Sometimes students have several groups for different projects in a single class.
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Searching for classmates based on their skill tags was not intuitive for participants. They suggested a filter that included different filtering elements.
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For certain buttons, the clickable area is too small (only on the text). Participants were confused when they clicked on the right place but the prototype had no response.
Next Steps
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Integrate the feedback from usability tests and make improvement.
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Continue iterating and implementing the fantastic ideas that are brought up during the further steps.
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Add a second persona - professor, who is another group of representative users of Canvas Student.
07 REFLECTION
Reflection
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User experience design is more like a matter of human beings instead of designing. It is important to stand on the point of users and understand their pain points and needs.
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Iteration is important for user experience design to idealize the current work step by step.
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User experience designers need to make key decisions for trade-offs.
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Users are more likely to give valuable suggestions for the low-fidelity prototype when it is just simple sketches instead of a refined version.