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Query

Q&A Platform for Students & Instructors

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Overview

Query is an online platform that all

My Role

Timeline

Toolbox

Team

UX Research, UX Design Lead, Usability Testing

Feb 2021 - Present

Miro, Figma

Sunanda Xi Yue Goh, Katherine Fu

Problem

Nowadays, online forums and discussion boards have become very popular as digital communication platforms. A particular group of interest among these platforms’ users is teachers and students. Students are often using these outlets to ask questions and exchange ideas, whereas teachers are seeking to address students’ questions/concerns and provide maximal support. However, when the instructional team is disproportionately smaller than the number of students enrolled in a class, the sheer volume of communication on these platforms can become overwhelming. If these communication platforms don’t have an interface that can organize and display content in an intuitive and optimal way, then the quality and efficiency of communication between users may decrease.

Process

We adapted the following design thinking process, which consists of 5 phases: research, define/analysis, ideation, prototyping, and testing & evaluation.

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Research

Given the demand for online classes and online communication during the pandemic, many schools have already started to utilize existing online Q&A platforms such as Piazza and Canvas. In order to understand how students and instructors currently navigate the task of Q&A, we conducted contextual inquiries with three participants, asking them to think aloud as they walked us through the context/tasks they're most familiar with. We then transcribed these interviews in a spreadsheet format to organize the participants' interactions in separate segments. This provided a more granular view of the participants' areas of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the context. 

Analysis

We analyzed the data from the contextual inquiries by mapping our participants' experiences onto five types of models: flow, sequence, artifact, cultural, and physical. Shown below are the models we constructed for one of the student participants. 

Flow Model

The flow model helped us focus on how our participants coordinate, communicate, and interact with other users performing within the same context. 

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Sequence Model

The flow model helped us focus on how our participants coordinate, communicate, and interact with other users performing within the same context. 

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*Case study still under construction. Please contact me at vera.wei@gmail.com for more details.

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