Zoom Redesign
My role:
UX Researcher and UX Designer (1 of 1)
Challenges of Online Special Education
Although all students struggle with a lack of community and peer interaction, special needs students are more likely to be even more isolated than the average student. I wanted to do something to help students that have a mental or learning disability have a better online learning experience.
I interviewed 6 special needs educators to learn more about the challenges their students were facing with regards to learning online. I decided to interview educators since they have a better background to understand the needs of their students; most special needs students may not be able to accurately communicate their needs well enough to get thorough interview feedback, and direct observation was not possible during a pandemic. However even though I was interviewing educators, my questions centered on discovering challenges their students were facing.
Goals of User Research:
Learn about the challenges special needs students are facing
Learn how technology is currently being used in the classroom and how it can be improved
Demographics:
3 mild - moderate special needs teachers
3 moderate - severe special needs teachers
4 exclusively middle school teachers
2 K-8 teachers
““That part of it is hard because you can’t pick up the other cues that you would find in a physical setting, where you could if somebody’s looking at you very quizzical, like your eyes are like ‘I’m not sure what’s going on’. It’s hard to read on a Zoom call.””
Five out of the six teachers I interviewed explicitly stated a problem between student-teacher communication. From the teacher’s perspective, they are not able to assess and cater to their students’ needs well enough in a virtual setting, which affects the quality of education the students receive. A middle school special education teacher stated that “one of the hardest things for me is to tell whether or not they're understanding or getting the concepts that I'm trying to teach them.” Since teachers are not able to well observe their students, they feel like they can’t address their individual needs.
““The kids aren’t going to say ‘I need help.’ They just don’t do it; that’s a Special Ed kid. ‘I need help. Teacher I’m failing right now and I really—.’ Nobody’s going to say that, the executive functioning skills just aren’t there.””
Special needs students have a harder time communicating to the teacher if they need help. One participant said, “I mean, chat is an issue, right, with kids with special needs, because they're embarrassed.” Students also feel like they aren’t being noticed by their teacher and that their emotional needs are not being met, which leads to more feelings of isolation, frustration, and not feeling part of a community.
6/6 educators said that the biggest challenges their students are facing is either a lack of social interaction or attending to the screen on Zoom
3/6 educators mentioned that students struggle to keep up with virtual general education classes
Other challenges for students included difficulty motivating themselves, not feeling like part of a community, and an increased reliance on their family for educational support.
Problem Statement.
Special needs students, who are having a harder time keeping up in a virtual classroom and feel more isolated than general education students, need a better way to privately communicate their emotions and needs to their teacher. If special education students are able to communicate more easily, the students can receive better help from their teacher and more support from their peers in hopes to feel understood, seen, and included.
The Social Student vs. The Private Student
After user research, I decided to focus on special needs students who are verbal and may have some classes with general education students. Education for special needs students who have more severe needs looks more like therapy; it would be difficult to design for those needs without being able to observe students and teachers interact due to the pandemic.
Mimi: The Social Student
Mimi represents the students that have more of an individualized Zoom education experience, but struggle with a lack of community and peer presence.
2 avenues of public communication, 1 avenue of private communication
Aidan: The Private Student
Aidan represents the experience of the middle school students, as described by half of the teachers I interviewed. He represents the students that have issues keeping up with the pace of online learning, and have difficulty asking for help. He has a more emotional tie to his learning disability, and has more group classes than one-on-one sessions.
1 avenue of public communication, 2 avenue of private communication
User Testing : Designing to Balance Both Needs
I wanted my final designs to cater to the needs of both the Private student and the Social student as much as possible. To incorporate the needs of the Social student, I wanted students to be able to react to each other’s messages in the chat to create a sense of community. I also wanted to allow for public reactions rather than making the Reactions feature completely private. For the Private student, I wanted to allow for easy and organized private messaging, as well as private reactions.
Thoughts on the lo-fi prototype
For round #1 of user testing I talked to one of the teachers I talked to for the user research portion. Additionally, I tested with two general education six year olds; one has experience with Zoom learning and the other does not. Testing with the six year olds showed me what symbols and interactions could be improved from a student perspective, and after talking to educators, they said that some special needs students in middle school share the same reading level as younger general education elementary school students.
Insights
Adding more symbols and pictures are crucial since students may have difficulties recognizing non-sight words
The prototype needs to align better with the existing mental model of how Zoom features work, especially with regards to choosing a recipient
Students may need assistance writing a chat message
Combining the Reactions and Chat feature is visually confusing for students
Visually, the text and symbols were too small
Thoughts on the hi-fi prototype
User Test with a Special Education Student Teacher
In round #2 of user testing, I got feedback from a different special education teacher I talked to for user research and a special education student teacher who hadn’t heard about the project yet. In addition, I tested the design with one of the six year olds I tested with in round #1; this was to make sure the design was functional and comprehendible.
The Reactions modifications and the “fill-in chat” feature were well received by the teachers I interviewed. Though it is a step in the right directions, the prototype needs even more symbols to help the students navigate the features easily. The six year old was able to tell that the green outlined emojis were “happy” and the red ones were “sad” emojis; however, the emojis selected need to be modified to keep a positive classroom atmosphere. One teacher said that most of the kids would send Reactions publicly rather than privately, so it might work better to have “Secret” clicked initially to reduce disruptions.
One of the teachers really stressed the importance of creating a way to tell students to wait for a response from the teacher, and to not repeatedly message the teacher. Special needs students may click buttons repeatedly to get a response, which would be disruptive.
Clickable Quotes from Teacher User Tests
Thoughts on Private Chat feature and “Fill-in” Chat feature
Thoughts on Reactions feature
Thoughts on the Message Reaction feature
Final Result.
The Public Chat Feature
Students can react to messages easily, providing feedback to the teacher and support to their peers. Teachers can also use reactions to provide quick acknowledgment to students without disrupting the teaching flow. Original inspiration from Microsoft Teams.
The message bubbles are formatted like popular messaging methods (iMessage, Messenger), making that chat feel more familiar and easier to read. There is a slight color differentiation between the chats you send vs. receive.
The Private Chat Feature
Picking a Message Recipient
Students click the “To:” button to select a new message recipient, which is consistent with how Zoom currently works. Each person’s picture is displayed next to their names which helps students that struggle to identify non-sight words. Hosts and co-hosts are at the front of the list for easy access and to deter side conversations.
Private messages show up in new tabs similar to a browser window, which is familiar to students. Private chats are separated from the public chat window so that messages do not get lost.
“Fill-in'“ Chat Feature
The question mark bubble symbol provides message prompts to students who struggle to verbalize their thoughts. Both prompts have a symbol next to them that could help students memorize the meaning of the prompt; this would be helpful for students who struggle with reading. The symbol is place on the left of the chat window as a result of teacher feedback; we read left to right, so the button would be more visible on the left corner.
Waiting For a Response
Special needs students may get impatient waiting for a response or acknowledgment from their teacher. This animation cues the student to wait until the teacher is available to respond and to refrain from repeatedly messaging the teacher.
The Private & Public Reactions Feature
Secret/Private Reactions
Students can choose from a range of private Reactions to send to the hosts. The Reactions are grouped by color to provide visual cues to identify what the Reactions signify. There is a green, yellow, and red zone of Reactions to potentially help with emotional regulation. The “Secret” button is initially clicked to prevent this feature becoming a class distraction.
Public Reactions
Students can display selected reactions publicly. The symbols are restricted to the positive ones to foster a positive educational environment and minimize class distractions.
Takeaways.
Striving for Balance
During this project, it was very important to me to incorporate both personas into one design rather than pick a persona to design for. Even though finding a balance is hard, it made me feel better about the final design since it is useful for more people rather than a target subgroup. Specially for a design impacting education, it is unfair to have the design support the needs of one type of student over another type; my goal is to have both types of students excel in the long run.
User Testing with children is difficult!
Before I started my user tests with the six year old students I got some advice to treat user testing as a game to engage them. This advice worked for the most part, but I noticed their attention span diminishes easily and they tend to get disheartened if they can’t figure out the “right” place to click. To anyone who is user testing with children, I recommend being extra encouraging and patient with them. Treating user testing as a challenge or a game can be tricky since children want to be good at the game; therefore, they were a bit more frustrated or defensive when they couldn’t figure out how to complete a task with the prototype.
Additionally, beware of parents taking over the session and directing their child through tasks! This makes it impossible to gage the child’s interactions with the design and get their true feedback. I would recommend briefing all parents beforehand and highlight the importance of allowing their child to freely explore the design.