Paper Prototyping & Test Results

Our team has been looking into the problem of low participation of UMD students in LinkedIn Learning services for most of this semester. Our initial contextual inquiry and the following analysis from the broader environmental perspective have produced convincing evidence that the underlying reasons why students were not utilizing such a valuable free educational resource was not that they were not interested in LinkedIn courses but rather that the information about it was somehow absent in the typical channels of engagement that students normally use while conducting their study and information seeking activities. Even though, UMD IT Department has been working hard on putting this information forth by building a well-designed online page for direct login to LinkedIn Learning platform using UMD authenticated sign-in process, too many students don’t even know that the page exists. The big part of the problem is the complexity of different ways of engagement that UMD students can pursue and that the information about it is scattered across many digital platforms created by UMD schools, departments, student driven clubs and associations, as well as related organizations. These plethora of resources makes it difficult to sift through.

Our work on this project could not be more timely; the events of the past few weeks and the related move to online learning format have proven and emphasized even more the need for a well-organized and easily accessible online information system that can support students and help them to be well informed about all the opportunities that being part of UMD community offers to them, including the benefits of free access to LinkedIn Learning. At the current stage of our design we have gained an understanding that the best solution to the problem that we are trying to solve is not creating yet another website where pertinent information just gets lost, but rather building on the existing capabilities of the Canvas (Elms) platform as the one that all UMD students are well-familiar with and visit on the regular bases.

Our work on designing how the integration of information about LinkedIn Learning services on ELMS could look like, started from the paper prototype that considered adding a tab on the ELMS main tab bar and creating a separate ELMS page with links (including the UMD LinkedIn Learning). However, our rapid prototyping and additional analysis has led us to the new idea in conveying the information about LinkedIn courses through more implicit means, that could assure its visibility and would do that by reflecting on the connection of LinkedIn courses with student’s current subject of study (assignments and projects included in their regular UMD courses)

Tasks / Features

The tasks that we chose to include in our prototypes are making it to be fast and easily changed. We can make it less than a real system by lowering the fidelity and interactivity. We believe that our decision to include the tasks are important because it is a way for us to evaluate our design before it is too late and expensive. The features that we chose to include in our prototypes are using local prototypes where horizontal and vertical intersect. We are sure local prototypes are a good place to start, help us see how a particular functionality would play out, and help us understand how much functionality a system needs. We use local prototypes because we want to use it to evaluate our design alternatives. By using local prototypes, it is good for us especially when our team can’t decide on a small part of our design. On the other hand, we like to use local prototypes for particular isolated interaction details such as the appearance of our icon and wording of our message. We love the feature that we use because local prototypes have a short lifespan. Last but not least, we ensure to use pilot testing for evaluations of our prototypes.

Prototype mock ups

Paper prototype could demonstrate what kind of interactions and navigations that the actual product will have in the future. Since our product is a website, we can create a UI/UX on paper and show how the website will function.In this system, bring you after clicking any of the links of your emls, testudo. In the prototype website. First page we can see that it gives you the option to sign up for a free trial, then the major part will be on the right side where you can login in with your Institution. So, for UMD students can use that link to login in. It gives you the option to sign if you already have an account, you can also rest your password or username if you forget it for any. Lastly, on the 3rd page we see that, you can set the amount of time you spend on linkedin learning by setting a goal of the week. Students should be able to see their progress on classes they are taking. You can save a class to take later. For some classes in UMD you can assign you classes to take in linkedin learning which you can save. Another good feature, To pick classes for you which uses algorithms based on your previous class you took, can suggest you for other classes related to it. You can search for skills you want to learn such as; Java, Python, SQL ect. We can see trending classes which people are talking about in the Job market.

UX evaluation technique

We select summative evaluation techniques to evaluate our prototype. Our decision to select this technique based on the helpfulness of the technique. We believe it is more helpful for us to sum up our design than form it as formative evaluation. We also like to use quantitative data rather than qualitative data because we prefer to collect numerical data. We are sure to not select qualitative data as our evaluation technique as it identifies abstract concepts. Our evaluation plan is assessing user experience given a certain design, so we can assess improvement in experience due to changes that are implemented by using quantitative analysis.

Pilot Testing

We conducted our pilot test of the wireframe by evaluating emotional impact. We evaluated it by expressing emotion through our feelings. On the other hand, we used verbal and non-verbal languages to conduct our pilot test. There were some facial expressions and other behaviors to get the results. The results were self-reported via verbal techniques and emotional values felt by the user but not necessarily observed by us. We learned how to evaluate emotional impact with concurrent self-reporting. We tried to analyze participants' comments on feelings and their causes in the user experience.

At first, we chose to use local prototypes as our prototype where horizontal and vertical intersect. We are sure local prototypes are a good place to start, help us see how a particular functionality would play out, and help us understand how much functionality a system needs. We use local prototypes because we want to use it to evaluate our design alternatives. By using local prototypes, it is good for us especially when our team can’t decide on a small part of our design. On the other hand, we like to use local prototypes for particular isolated interaction details such as the appearance of our icon and wording of our message. We love the prototype that we use because local prototypes have a short lifespan.

However, it led us to change from local prototype to T-shaped prototype. We believe a T-shaped prototype is a happy compromise for us to show after shots of our wireframes. We use a T-shaped prototype because it has a nice balance and advantage of both horizontal bar and vertical stems. We are sure the horizontal bar in the T-shaped prototype makes most of our user interface realized at shallow level. On the other hand, the vertical stems in the T-shaped prototype makes a few parts done in depth.

Low-fidelity Wireframe

Link : https://xd.adobe.com/view/6e4d2b6a-3f36-4681-6edd-ac5715a4b050-187c/

Features

Displays LinkedIn Learning links with video thumbnail images.
Finds the most relevant linkedIn Learning videos to whatever the student is working on currently.
Clicking on the instructor name to see other courses taught by them.

When a user tries to complete Homework4 for INST314, AI will search for related videos or courses that are helpful for completing questions on homework4 from LinkedIn Learning services and display it as a list on the side of the page so that students can identify easily and get access to the video right away. This way, students will naturally get to learn more about the subject related to the homework from videos on LinkedIn Learning as well as get to know about the service itself that they have access to for free with their tuition. After a student is done watching a video which is related to the INST314, the student is given an option to watch a full topic on the course, or multiple courses for topics from INST314.