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For this sprint, understanding user needs and experiences was critical to the success of the team because our understandings of the project space were so varied. We interviewed 5 people with different skills and experiences. Our users are as follows:
Next we categorized our notes by the major themes that emerged and consolidated our findings using digital sticky notes. Our insights can be categorized into three major groups – insights about motivation, community, and identity
Based on our interviews, we created basic persona types, one older user and one younger. Our client was concerned that one of our personas seemed much more advantaged than the other, yet that student was described as having lower motivation. Our client also mentioned that the target audience would likely be a younger demographic that may still experience many of the challenges we outlined for the older student. We kept this in mind as we moved forward.
Age: 31
Time Completed: 10 out of 12 years
Education: Some highschool
John’s interests and goals are motivated by his awareness of the current integration of technology in society and wanting to be able to have a good start when trying to join the tech field and avoid the possibility of reincarceration.
Age: 18
Time Completed: 1 out of 5 years
Education: Highschool Grad
Michael’s interests in the Flikshop program are influenced by his desire to complete his sentence as soon as possible and then turn is life around.
Each team member developed a sketch and then the team voted on the top three ideas. We split into three groups of two to explore these ideas and then presented them to our client for a decision.
This concept gives the user periodic instruction, tips, and encouragement through pre-loaded feedback from the instructor. While it would not be custom, this feedback would be tailored to the user and their learning experience. For example, if a person keeps clicking a wrong answer, a not would appear that would explain the most common misconceptions that may lead to choosing that answer/
Receive encouraging feedback between lessons
Instructor tips are displayed at key moments in the learning process
This concept focuses in on gamification. The user is represented as an avatar that creates their personal journey map by choosing what kinds of activities they complete. The user sets goals and views their progress toward those goals. As they complete lessons and courses that bolster their skills, they are able to monitor their skills by viewing their skills progress bars and badges. This concept also connects users with mentors.
Users create a game-like student journey that maps their experience.
Students can reach out to mentors, create goals, and view their skills
Many of our users spoke about how they were motivated by healthy competition and community. In this concept, users form teams with others in their facility and compete against other teams to earn the most points. They can boost their team’s points by taking classes, getting involved in hack-a-thons and other events, and by acting as tutors for newer students. Students can also view their personal performance statistics.
Students compete in teams against others to earn the most points
Students view their performance stats
We did not test in this sprint. In the previous sprints, the original team allowed the client to make decisions about which sketch to pursue, but our client was not able to be as involved in this semester. We attempted to set up a mid sprint meeting with him, but when we were unsuccessful, we created low fidelity screens for each of our top three ideas.
Our client was excited by all the ideas we presented to him and told us what he liked about each solution instead of picking one, so we decided to combine the most salient concepts.