Choosing The Google Classroom Innovation Project

I was determined to begin a project, and I was excited when I finally identified a topic I was truly interested in addressing: learning effectively in a virtual setting. I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship to General Assembly’s User Experience On Demand course — which gave me a stronger foundation on the design process.

I began my project september of 2020 — a month in the virtual learning environment. I knew I wanted to help students enjoy an improved user experience with Google Classroom and I had two scenarios: working with the existing Google Classroom website and redesigning it in order to solve my user’s problems, or adding a new feature to the existing Google Classroom website that would solve my user’s problems. After deciding to choose the first scenario, I identified my initial goal as improving the user experience in the process of task submission. My main points were that:

• A student should not have to spend excess time on Google Classroom
• Students should enjoy using Google Classroom
• Students should be able to communicate more effectively with teachers
• Students should have less difficulties using Google Classroom

After that, I knew that I needed to do some research on a sample of the larger population being ambitious high school students who are struggling to learn in the new virtual setting. My survey (which I sent out through Google Forms) consisted in clearly identifying who I was designing for, what the user’s goal are in using Google Classroom, why the user wants to accomplish this goal, what tools the user needs to accomplish this goal, and what occurs if the user does not accomplish this goal. I knew that this idea of redesigning Google Classroom came from me, so I wanted to make sure I was not placing my own bias into others’ perspectives, which is why I made sure to write my assumptions and compare them to my findings.

https://forms.gle/yi7EQNC87Cj88Qw38

Besides the survey, I conducted an actual interview with one of my peers who qualified as my target audience. This gave me lots of insights of what students want including:

• Increase in speed
• More college and career encouragement
• New features
• Bringing features from other popular apps to Google Classroom

Through my findings, I was able to create an affinity map. My main groups were: parent and peer interaction, teacher interaction, perfect learning environment, useless features, useful features, and opinions, with parent and peer interaction being my most popular group. I then created some “I statements’’ using the information from affinity map.

Google Classroom Innovation Affinity Mapping

I wanted to ensure that I was gathering all of my user’s needs by being represented through one simple way, which is why I created a persona: Stephanie Marquez. Stephanie is a 15 year old high school student living in Torrance, California who wants to feel accomplished, prefers a work environment that flows with ease, and wants a personalized educational platform that encourages her to succeed and really detests spending too much time on tasks, doesn’t like distractions, and has trouble finding interesting and engaging resources to learn.

Stephanie Marquez User Persona

I knew there were others who have experienced similar issues to the ones my peers and I were experiencing who have attempted to solve the issues, which is why I completed a competitive analysis to make sure I was addressing some aspects they weren’t.

Plus/Delta Analysis

Feature Inventory Analysis

After doing so and making sure to get the feedback of current UX designers on my project, I was able to define a problem using my persona: High School Student Stephanie needs a virtual learning environment that allows her to communicate with her teacher effectively, avoid distractions, and gain rewards in order to fulfill her goals of preparing and succeeding academically in college

I also proposed a few solutions. Using the “How might we” framework, I targeted three main areas of the website I wanted to address:

1. Calendar and assignment
2. Customization and external features
3. Functionality

This is how I formulated my hypothesis which states: by redesigning the Google Classroom platform that makes the calendar feature more noticeable, provides the option to customize external educational resources for each user (like Spotify with music and Pinterest with ideas), and using a content delivery network, compress unused data and temporarily deactivate plugins when unused.

Having completed the basic steps, all I had to do was reiterate through the project and begin building my solution!