SMART SCHOOL DESK
Tangible Interaction Interface
The inclusion of technology in classrooms have proven to both improve children's learning abilities and distract them enough to have a negative impact on their grades. This smart school desk is a fun, interactive learning management tool for students in a classroom environment that provides a platform for students to interact with functions most common for the school day (i.e. lessons, homework, projects, quizzes, etc.) in a manner that is regulated but still interactive and fun. It also supports few tangible interaction gestures with a smart pen. This is a prototyping project so the main focus was to explore various prototyping methods.
Prototyping Methods Explored
Exploratory Sketching
Storyboards
Hybrid Prototyping
Low-Fidelity Prototyping
Physical Prototyping
High-Fidelity Prototyping
Video/Experience Prototyping
Arduino
Early Ideation
INITIAL SKETCHES - Exploration of the Physical Form Factor
LEARNING MANAGEMENT PORTAL (WEBSITE)
This was an idea considered for both the teacher and the students’ perspective. We could either improve existing websites like ixl.com or BrainPOP to make the interface more friendly and interactive to inculcate enthusiasm for completing homework or we could create a portal for teachers to easily assign homework and track progress of each student to offer timely help.
PULL OUT SCREEN
A school desk that functions as any normal school desk does but can be pulled out to access additional materials or complete tasks when the teacher allows the students to do so.
MINI TABLET
I mini tablet that could gamify homework and make it easy to complete it on the go. A replacement for playing video games when the child needs to be engaged.
FLEXIBLE SMART MAT
A flexible smart mat that could turn any surface into a smart desktop. The experience of the interfaces that the child interacts with in school can be carried over to the home also to ensure continuity.
TANGIBLE USER INTERFACE SMART DESK
A smart desk with inbuilt screen that supports interaction with tangible objects and group collaboration. We decided to go ahead with this system as it provided opportunities for holistically improving a student’s classroom experience, for individual and group work. It helped simplify many interactions that could otherwise easily distract a student from completing a task.
STORYBOARDS
Creating storyboards helped in formulating the scenarios for user evaluation, apart from helping in deciding the necessary features for the system.
STORYBOARD 1
Mike has got these new smart desks in his school. He got a new “Smart Pen” that takes care of his attendance and helps him easily log into his desk. The new interface is much less confusing than what he was using before to access assignments, extra materials, etc. He can access materials pertaining to the lecture that his teacher has assigned for the day by doing quick interactions with his pen, he can also take notes on the teacher’s slides and save a copy of it for himself.
STORYBOARD 2
It’s group activity time in Mike’s classroom. Collaboration has become so easy with the new smart desks. He can either work on his individual space or he can join his desk with his other group mates and work together on a big screen and share resources easily.
Final System
The key elements we considered while designing were the already existing elements a middle school kids interacts with all day long. A desk, a pen and computer screen. We combined these elements and brainstormed following list of functions and scenarios that we can incorporate in our smart TUI desk.
1.Login / Dashboard / Logout
Login: When student walks up to desk, they set pen in pen holder. Student can press the desk and login automatically. This interaction automatically takes attendance
Dashboard: Shows students homework, lessons, projects, basic search functionality, profile
Logout: When the student walks away from the desk (a certain amount of feet), it logs them out. When the student presses a button on the desk, it will log them out.
2. Lesson:
->Biology / Genetics / Chemistry etc.
->Teacher is instructing in front of the class and the slideshow is displayed on the tangible screen
->Students are able to take notes directly on their version of the slideshow
->Automatically save their notes to the cloud
->3d augmented reality of items into smartphone
3.Group Projects
->Geography: Have to create a poster together
->Request for collaboration with other students that are logged in
->Similar to ‘google drive’ style, can be done at separate desks.
->Can still have multiple points of touch on one screen if another student needs to come over
->If students move desks together, the display will be combined
EXPLORATION OF THE DIGITAL INTERFACE
Quick initial sketches with pen and paper showing Login, Lesson and Group Collaboration screens:
Whiteboard sketches before making high-fidelity showing the exact placements of elements necessary for the Lessons and the Tasks page:
First Round of Prototypes
Both the physical form factor and the interface was prototyped. The physical form factor with cardboard and the screen with pen and paper. The form factor was designed in such a way that it allowed the desk to be elevated at certain height for kids to read and interact easily. When the desk is not in use the student can simply rest it flat across the bottom support and it will be automatically be in off mode.
Second Round of Prototypes
After performing an internal Cognitive Walkthrough we moved forward to the second round of prototyping of the interface. The physical form factor was changed to a flat desk to help collaborate with more classmates.
Prototype Testing
User testing was conducted with three participants. These participants are a part of the HCI program in IUPUI. They were requested to approach the prototype and critique it as middle school students.
They were asked to perform a set of 3 tasks:
Task 1:
Imagine that you’ve walked into class and sat down at your desk. You need to log on to your desk in order to see your assignments for the day. How would you go about logging on?
Task 2:
Imagine that the teacher is about to start a lesson about biology. She has asked that you follow along with her slideshows on your desk so you can take notes and refer to supplemental materials. How would you go about doing this?
Task 3:
Imagine that the teacher has given you time to work on your group project over geography. Together, your group is working on a digital poster about Countries. How would you go about working together with your team on your project?
Final Prototype
Video Prototype
Slideware Prototype
Initial screen, before login (click on caption to view the other screens)
Design Wish List
1. Anonymous questions for students
An option for student to anonymously ask a question to the teacher so that she can address it real-time when class is going on so that shy kids don’t refrain from getting their doubts cleared.
2. Improve collaboration work
Brainstorm for more on tools and features to share resources to ensure maximum engagement with the group than just have a shared screen and resources.
3. More interactive / tangible options
Design a more child-friendly list of tangible objects that can be used to learn more about a specific place/process/concept.
4. Gamification
Exploring Initial Sketch #3 and prototyping a mini tablet for gamifying homework.
Research Wish List
After conducting our evaluations there were some questions that arose that we wish to give a thought on before we move on to the next stages
->Smart Pen: Is it a good way to interact with the Tangible User Interface?
->Where is the most comfortable place on the desk to dock the pen/object?
->Is the feature of connecting the desks for collaboration feasible?
+What new features to add to it and how much?
->Will our target audience (elementary school children) find this interface easy to interact with?
Lessons Learned
---> Circling, gifs, highlighting - are some of the important interactions which we showed simply by using slidewares (Powerpoint.) Invision or Marvel would have never made the interaction seem so smooth while testing it with participants. It made creating a video prototype also easier.
--->Wizard of Oz is a very impactful way of delivering the functionalities of prototype - especially in a Video Prototype. Participants would feel like they are interacting with the actual system without the “wizarding” being done inconspicuously and so their reactions would be as close to as it would be while testing with the actual system.
--->It is alright to use ideas from from initial stages that you may have discarded earlier while developing final prototypes. Iteration is not a linear process.
--->Even if you are at the later stages of prototyping, if there is still no clarity about the flow of a system it is alright to start from scratch again and brainstorm on a piece of paper or whiteboard. It is better than making the wrong product.
--->Don’t get too attached: Iterative prototyping (i.e. paper, low-fidelity, hi-fidelity) made sure that we didn’t settle for the first design that we created
