Berkeley Hour
Human-Centered Design Decal Final Project | Fall 2020
Candice Lee
Your one-stop solution to engage in online classes and get your questions answered regardless of where you are, when you are.
Defining the Problem
Due to COVID-19, many Berkeley students are forced to stay home and attend classes remotely. In addition to the difficulty of staying engaged and motivated in online classes, many students living in different time zones often have to sacrifice their health and other commitments to be able to attend classes. While most classes offer asynchronous options, office hours, which are a critical component of a student's learning success, often do not take into account the time zone difference, making it difficult for students to attend and have their questions answered.
"How might we improve online office hours to create an effective online learning experience?"
Needs and Significance of Issue
💻 Standardize and streamline the process of attending online office hours
⏰ Increase accessibility to students across the world regardless of time zone
User Research
Guiding questions to understand the situation:
🌎 Demographics:
- What time zone are you located at for this virtual semester?
- What is your major and school year?
- What classes are you taking?
📚 Diving Deeper:
- How often do you use office hours, both in person and online? Why is there a difference, if any?
- What do you use office hours for?
- What are your thoughts on online office hours?
- How does online office hours compared real life, physical office hours?
- If you could change one thing about online office hours, what would it be?
User Personas
Journey Map
Quantitative Research Method
📋Google Form Survey: 57 students responded to a Google Form survey that aims to understand their online office hours better. Below are the results:
10 Key Insights
1. Most students use Office Hours to ask help on assignments and projects.
2. Online office hours have its own pros and cons.
3. Online office hours are more convenient because it’s all accessible in “one click."
4. Time zone difference is an obstacle for students to attend online office Hours.
5. Waiting time for online office hours is another major pain point due to lack of transparency/ difficulty of estimation.
6. Students want more and longer office hours that have time slots spread out over the week.
7. Different classes have different sign up system for office hours.
8. Many of our interviewees have not gone to office hours in real life due to a
variety of reasons: they are a freshmen/ online office Hours are more convenient/ online office hours are less intimidating.
9. Most students tend to go to office hours for their STEM classes but not for the humanities.
10. Office hours is an integral part of students’ learning experience.
Ideation: Divergent and Convergent Thinking
Low-Fidelity Prototyping
🗓 Office Hour Scheduler: survey students' availability and create a regular office hour schedule on Bcourses that has a consistent Zoom link.
🔗 Hybrid Office Hours: students can submit their questions beforehand and instructors would record their answers to questions during part of Office Hour. Another part of Office Hour will be “walk in/ drop by” style where students could ask more personal questions/ collaborate with other students that won’t be recorded.
💬 Feedback:
✔️Might be helpful to have a centralized platform that can be used to ask questions for all the classes that the student is taking right now.
✔️During peak season when there’s a lot of people asking questions on Piazza, some of the questions often get overlooked. Something to consider for creating virtual office hours to address this problem.
✔️Recording office hours videos will be helpful, but this might discourage students who want more privacy when asking questions.
Mid-Fidelity Prototyping
💡Initially, I planned on using Bcourses discussion feature within each course for students to ask questions that the instructors would then gather to create videos to explain and address those questions. However, based on feedback from friends, I realized that it might be better to create a centralized platform that allows students to ask and view questions more easily. Therefore, when creating Berkeley Hour prototype, I made sure to create a feature where students can review questions they have asked previously in a straightforward manner. With that, they can view answers to their questions easily as well as follow up on questions that never got answered by an instructor. When a question is being answered, there will be a link underneath it that directs to the explanation video. It allows students to study more efficiently.
💬 Feedback:
✔️Stick to gray scale for mid-fidelity prototype - a note for future projects.
✔️Users may need this product on the desktop more than the phone because they usually complete school work on the desktop/tablet rather than their phone.
✔️Add more spacing between the questions because it's a bit hard to tell if the buttons apply to the question above or below.
✔️Might be good to add text to the bottom of the icons so it's easier for users to remember what the icons mean.
Final Product Prototyping
