Exploring Idea For Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Course Website to Support The Learning Process
Apr 8, 2022
Scope and Focus Area
This research is part of a team project and this research just focuses on the Ideate and Conceptual Testing process.
Context Background
HCI learning website is a website that contains information about the project and the methods used to complete the project.
Based on the results of the Google Analytics report that has been integrated on the Google Sites website for HCI courses, this website has been viewed 55 times from 24 October 2021 to 5 November 2021 and has carried out lectures and practicums 2 times. And this website was only visited by 12 users out of a total of 110 students participating in HCI courses. This report proves that the HCI course website is still rarely opened by students.
After doing user research, there are several things that cause users to rarely open the website shown in Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) below:
Jobs to be Done (When I …) Needs/Outcome (I want to …) Pain Points Current Workaround Expected Benefits (So I can …) When I working on the HCI project. - Can work on projects without problems.
Get an explanation of the methods used for the project.
Get clear guidelines. | - There are no instructions on what to do each week of practicum meetings on the website.
The methods on the learning website are incomplete.
There are no examples of using a method on the website.
The language used in the explanation of the method is too rigid so it is difficult to understand.
Difficult website navigation that makes users confused about what to visit first.
Difficult to understand some of the terms in the method. | - Ask to lecturer or lab assistant.
Look for explanations of methods and instructions in lectures and practical slides.
Search for method explanations on Google or Youtube. | - Pass the HCI course with good grades. |
To solve the problems above, several How Might We Questions were made for brainstorming:
How might we help HCI students in working on HCI projects?
How can we make navigation on the HCI web more seamless?
How can we help students easily understand the implementation of a method?
Research Objective
Explore ideas that lead to a new HCI website experience.
Test the concept by defining the user's impression of the new concept.
Research Process and Methodology
At the ideate stage, the brainstorming method was used by answering HMWQ’s with stakeholders and conducting conceptual testing by comparing other e-learning platforms. Then, conceptual testing was carried out using the role-play method. Role play is a technique that requires participants and researchers to pretend by taking roles in a scene.
When conducting role-play, participant get the role of the college student who has just taken HCI course and other roles such as system, lecturer, alumni, and student friends are played by the researcher team. Role play at the conceptual testing stage aims to find other experiences and other scenarios that may occur before implementation (Simsarian, 2003).
Participants
Ideate:
1 IPB practitioner lecturer in the field of UX.
1 IPB alumni who work as a UX Designer
1 student participating in the HCI IPB course.
Conceptual Testing:
5 students participating in HCI IPB courses.
Key Insight
Ideate
Generated ideas:
Add log in. Log in aims to reduce the legal risk of placing non-licensed content to the public, protect the intellectual property of student projects, and make it clear what information is targeted at students and what information is made public.
Add a syllabus page, which is a page that separates material based on the week of the meeting. This page aims to provide guidance for users in attending lectures and practicums every week.
Add quiz and leaderboard features. This feature aims to provide an exciting and competitive feeling when taking HCI courses.
Add sample implementation video content and case study examples on the method details page.
Add a discussion forum feature, which is a feature for users to ask questions or discuss with fellow students, lecturers, practicum assistants, and IPB alumni who work in the HCI and UX fields. This page helps students who are shy about asking questions and helps document frequently asked questions to lecturers and practicum assistants.
Add an IPB UX webinar page, which is a page containing material or sharing from IPB alumni who work in the HCI and UX fields. This page aims to provide material that cannot be obtained in lectures or in practicum.
Add a glossary page, which is a page containing terms that are often used in HCI and UX along with their definitions.
Some pages have changes to the information architecture and layout, such as the landing page, design challenge page, and method page.
Design Output
Low-fidelity prototype
Storyboards
Conceptual Testing
Note: The before quote was obtained in research at the problem space stage.
Acceptance:
With the new concept, users feel more guided in working on projects and attending lectures every week.
Users feel that they understand more about using the method by adding implementation video content and case study examples on the method explanation page.
Users feel easier to navigate between content with this concept.
Users feel this concept has provided complete information to help them work on the project.
Pain points:
Some menu names such as “UX Toolbox” and “Glossary” are not familiar to users.
Displaying the quiz results on the leaderboard is not a good idea, because they feel insecure when their scores are seen by their friends.
Users questioning how technical the quiz is.
Users questioning the willingness of lecturers, alumni, or practicum assistants to answer questions in the discussion forum.
Design Impact
This research helps the HCI lecturer team in determining what features need to be added to the web to help the learning process, so the student can pass the HCI with the good grades.
Recommendations
Conduct discussions with the IMK course lecturer team regarding the technical implementation of the quiz.
Conduct further research on student needs in discussing in a discussion forum platform, validate whether students will use the discussion forum feature, and validate whether lecturers, alumni, and practicum assistants will actively answer student questions.
Reference
Simsarian KT. 2003. Take it to the next stage: The roles of role playing in the design process. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings.:1012 1013.doi:10.1145/765891.766123.