Team WIP: Service Meets Social

Raising Hands video sketch

servicesocial — Sat, 08 May 2010 19:28:22 +0000

Click the following link to watch our Raising Hands video sketch:

Raising Hands

Raising Hands Final Presentation

servicesocial — Thu, 06 May 2010 04:41:23 +0000

Below is our final presentation:

Raising Hands Final Presentation

further user testing

servicesocial — Sat, 01 May 2010 17:08:27 +0000

After fixing the location of our navigation bar and the name of various sections, along with creating a higher fidelity version of the interface, we performed further user testing. We discovered that the name of some sections were still a bit vague, but we were happy to see that our users understood how to navigate through our pages, use the tool bar, check messages, and initiate chat with friends in the community.

personas

servicesocial — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:16:06 +0000

About 3 weeks ago, we developed two persona’s for our scenario based on the people we worked with (our users) during our exploratory research. They have since then adjusted a bit, as our scenario has changed and refined. We’ll post the updated version soon.

Patricia, teacher:

She is a 5th grade math teacher at W. Virgina Public School
She has been teaching for 15 years
The school has just implemented the Raising Hands program and she is going through orientation
She is married and has 2 kids

Life goals:

She wants to dedicate her life to innovative education
She wants to see her kids go to collage & succeed
She wants financial security in her life

Experience goals:

She wants Raising Hands to make PBL projects easier
She wants access to resources
She doesn’t want to feel inadequate

End goals:

She wants to be able to reuse her projects
She wants to plan her entire semester
She wants to solicit community involvement for her projects

Anabelle Smith

5th grader at public school in W. Virgina – just transferred in from traditional instructional school
her school has just implemented the Raising Hands program (they do 3-week project per semester)
her favorite subject is math & theater/drama
she is a high-achiever with busy parents
she likes computers for playing games –> she finds out about RH community and is happy to use computer for school

Life goals: she wants to work for National Geographic

She is very curious about everything and loves the ocean because it’s full of animals. She wants to protect it.
She wants to travel the world

Experience goals:

She wants to be appreciated
She wants to help her classmates
She wants to get the teacher’s approval

End goal:

She wants to learn how to crop pictures & make them look nicer
She wants to learn how to upload her pictures from her camera
She wants to share her project with parents

low-fi prototyping

servicesocial — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 01:24:35 +0000

From our past wireframe, which laid out the website’s information architecture, we’ve now created a more developed interface. We performed user testing with a middle-aged mother, and two college age students. We had the user go through the task of logging in and navigating to the “Project Builder,” while thinking aloud their steps.

Between the past wireframes and this stage, we’ve discovered that having two locations for our two levels of navigation confuses the user. We’ve moved all navigation across the top. We have since refined our interface, improving the look and usability.

wireframing

servicesocial — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:12:58 +0000

We’ve been creating the information architecture of the Raising Hands Online Community based on a site map we developed earlier this month (which can be found in the pdf in the previous post.) Below are a couple screens of the basic wireframing. We have also developed a high-fidelity screen shot of the homepage.

Screen 1

Screen 2

Screen 3

RH Final Concept Presentation 4/12

servicesocial — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:29:56 +0000

Here are our slides for today’s discussion:

TEAM WIP-Presentation 4.12

skype call w/ buck institute for education

servicesocial — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:46:48 +0000

Yesterday we skyped with Alfred Solis, Director of New Media from the Buck Institute for Education that promotes PBL, to get some feedback on our new concept. BIE was very excited to hear what we were doing and promised any support they can get, as helping others promote PBL is part of their mission.

Some of the main points:

online resources/communities/discussion boards must become part of the process of change so that they get used
BIE has done workshops on PBL with teachers/school boards in 49 U.S. states, meaning that people know of PBL – the process of introducing it to schools however is slow – like any major systemic change
BIE focuses on supporting the front-runners (the teachers, the schools, the districts that have adopted PBL) so that they can become successful –> they then become promoters of PBL
they offer a lot of professional development trainings – they are now waiting for the “tsunami” that will hit them when many people will want these trainings – are afraid they will not be able to satisfy the demand with just 30 national faculty
usually 3-year contracts with districts – train-the-teacher model – teachers then become PBL leaders and teach others
usually one person does the trainings for the entire school
BIE shares all their resources for free and provides many links to other resources –> scattered materials, which is something we found that teachers don’t like
BIE is run from a trust fund

How our concept is different:

offers longer sustained support
cultivates the relationship between the RH team and the teachers
brings in the students as well by holding a student PBL orientation at the beginning of the year during the implementation stage
keeps the service contained: RH teams, research and collaborative workspace (like Classroom 2.0) in one space – a holistic approach
more tool on one central website, which serves as a very social hub & brings the community into engagement with schools & PBL

Raising Hands site map & refined service timeline

servicesocial — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:08:50 +0000

After meeting with Chris P who provided a lot of valuable feedback on our new concept, we refined the service timeline and created a site map for the online community of Raising Hands.

Click on the photo to view full and read the post-its. The color of the post-its is irrelevant except for the yellow post-its that show the very simplified service timeline as well as some questions to be resolved.

A service timeline for Raising Hands showing the first tier of the service: the implementation stage, which includes multiple touch points of sustained support from the RH Team. The second tier of the service takes place after the implementation stage and includes the access to the online community and an annual PBL workshop in August.

A Raising Hands website/online community site map. It’s messy now, but we think we captured all the themes & needs from our generative and exploratory research. The neon green post-its with the stars indicate possible scenarios for prototyping.

taking Raising Hands out to the real world

servicesocial — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 20:33:26 +0000

After receiving feedback from our sponsors to try to push the social aspect even more and take it out to the real world from just being an online community, we expanded our concept dramatically. We took the online community concept and integrated it into a much larger systematic service.

A publisher (such as Scholastic) would partner up with an educational research institution (such as the Buck Institute for Education), and both would deploy a team called ‘Raising Hands’ to local schools. ‘Raising Hands’ (RH) would be a team made up of PBL experts and other researchers. These teams would go to different schools, which have accepted to be part of this service, to teach teachers about PBL and how they can implement it in their curriculum. Throughout the academic year, the RH team and teachers will be in contact through an online community (our previous concept) where they can update and evaluate different phases of the project that was planned at the beginning of the school year. At the end of the school year, the RH team will provide the publisher with the information gathered so they can use it for future publications and keep up to date with teaching material.

A photo showing part of the stakeholder map of the new Raising Hands service.