My first attempt at designing for user experience was for a school project. Inspired by the rise of video conferencing tools in a socially-distanced climate, the project entailed a design/re-design of video conferencing platform(s) for our selected target audience. Having been subject to Home-based Learning(HBL) for the last 6 weeks, my team decided to tackle an issue near and dear to our hearts, our own HBL experience.

 

With my prior experience in the areas of marketing and visual design alongside an embodied understanding of the problem space; I lead the team throughout the project, taking point on the design and conduct of initial user research, data analysis, wireframing/prototyping, usability tests and documentation.

 

In this project, we aimed to address:

1. Zoom's User Interface being unsuitable for students/educators in a lecture/tutorial setting.

2. The lack of a platform that consolidates various other services (file-sharing, scheduling, persistent chat), besides video conferencing students, engage with for HBL.

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After, conducting contextual observation, prototyping, user testing, and heuristic evaluation we created, and iterated, on a low-fi mockup with Miro, as per the module's constraints.

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We found that Microsoft Teams delivers much of the functionality our target audience requires, as such, we have modelled our file management, sharing, and chat functions after it. For video conferencing, by redesigning Zoom's standard conferencing UI, we hoped to better mimic and situate users in the physical experience of being 'in' a lecture/tutorial, improving ease of access to functions, i.e. raise hand, react, share files. 

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The platform was designed with the conceptual model of 'a school desk in a classroom'. Core functionalities include:

1. Video Conferencing

2. Scheduling

3. File sharing/hosting

4. Chat

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Below is a video of the initial prototype in action: