Discovery-phase workshops with primary school pupils
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User Research with kids on 17th July - by Lesley Fosh (System Concepts) & Ghazaleh Cousin (Discovery Education)
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Discovery-phase workshops with primary school pupils
- 1. Welcome to System Concepts! If you would like to have a look around our brand new UX labs, please let one of us with a pink sticker know
- 2. Discovery workshops with primary school pupils The Research Thing: User research with kids 17 July 2018 Lesley Fosh and Ghazaleh Cousin @SystemConcepts / @DiscoveryEdUK
- 3. About us Lesley Fosh (@foshspice) Senior UX Consultant System Concepts Ghazaleh Cousin (@GhazalehCousin) Lead UX Researcher Discovery Education UK
- 4. Background Discovery Education UK is designing a new platform for its primary school subscription service. • Teacher view: Design and development stage • Pupil view: Discovery stage
- 5. The product challenge • Suitable for Foundation up to Key Stage 2 (ages 4-11). • Both engaging and adding educational value. • Provides benefits to teachers.
- 6. Research objectives • What features and capabilities should be offered to pupils? • What is an appropriate look and feel for the interface?
- 7. Our approach • Start with Key Stage 2. • Find a school to partner with. • Individual design exercise in a workshop setting.
- 10. Welcome Frankenstein designs Presentation Review existing modules Wrap up 1 2 3 4 5 Workshop structure
- 19. User accounts. Access to topics and content outside of school curriculum. Ability to find resources for other year groups. Clear menus.Printable resources to use offline. Rewards to track progress. A search bar. Bright colours. A range of content types: text, images, videos and games. Topical content. Avatars. Ability to choose difficulty level. Working design brief
- 20. Next steps • Repeat with other schools and key stages. • Align findings with teachers’ requirements. • Create mockups and use as probes in future workshops.
- 21. Key takeaways Researching with kids Creativity to unlock needs The use of visual elements and collage unlocks the ability for pupils to verbalise their thoughts and feelings. Finding the right balance Pupils of this age can be conflicted between what they find engaging versus what they feel is appropriate to their maturity. Group work Let children be inspired by each other’s work. Rewards for participation These help to keep children motivated and rewards them for their hard work.
- 22. Key takeaways Researching with kids Do your homework Learn as much as you can ahead of meeting the participants. Time and place Visit children in a fun environment and keep within their parent or teacher’s schedule. A range of communication methods Let children express themselves in different ways. Team up with additional moderators Make sure you have enough people to talk to children individually.
Editor's Notes
- Lesley: Thanks for coming. We’re going to be talking about a project we worked on together earlier this year. This was part of the discovery phase so was around finding out about users and their needs.
- Lesley: Some quick introductions. I’m Lesley and I’m a senior consultant here at System Concepts Ghazaleh: And I’m Ghazaleh and I’m the lead researcher at Discovery Education. Discovery Education is…. (describe Discovery Education) Lesley: And System Concepts is a UX consultancy with over 35 years experience. We’ve got a strong research team and we help our clients with projects around UX and accessibility over a wide range of physical and digital products and services. We’re going to talk today about a project we recently conducted together with the help of another consultant Charlotte Morrison who is here today as well. Ghazaleh’s going to give you some background on the background and the research objectives.
- Ghazaleh
- Ghazaleh The product needs to address the following challenges: Suitable for pupils for all levels from foundation to Key Stage 2 (ages 4 to 11). Both engaging and providing added value for pupils. Retains the learning value so teachers maximise the benefits of the service. (Maybe talk about what research you have done on the teacher side and what has been implemented so far?)
- Ghazaleh
- Lesley Having met with Ghazaleh and her colleagues we came up with an approach that would help them answer the research questions. The approach we suggested was: KS2 – from our discussions it was clear that there’s quite a big difference between 4 year olds and 11 year olds. It’s likely that the eventual product is not going to be one size fits all key stages. Rather than try to find requirements from Foundation all the way up to KS2, we thought start with upper years whose requirements for functionality are likely to be wider – they are more likely to have more features and lower key stages might have variations on them. School – School visit vs. lab based work – we considered recruiting pupils come into the lab accompanied by their parents, but we thought we’d get much more value from talking to children in their own environments. Ghazaleh will tell you that finding a school that’s willing to let you come in to do research for a day is not easy. We found a school through a personal connection which made things a lot easier for us. They needed to organise which children could come out of class at which time and also organised getting all of our consent forms signed ahead of the sessions, so was an absolute godsend. Co-design – the approach itself was to run a series of workshops with 3-4 pupils in each for just 45 minutes each. The main exercise was to design their own educational websites by looking through screenshots of their favourite websites and cutting and sticking them onto their own website design, and discussing why they were including the things they were.
- Lesley Wanted to find out about their tech use for school and at home before we arrived on the day Ideally we would have sent them a probe pack to fill in over time, but because we were short on time we sent them a Google form to fill in during an IT lesson We gathered info from 86 pupils across year groups and found out about their technology use, their favourite websites for school and other things.
- Analysed the survey data to find out what their most used websites are for school work (at school and at home) to come up with a list of about 20 websites and printed some large screenshots from each of them Here we have: Purple mash Youtube BBC bitesize BBC iPlayer Maths for kids Friv Times table rock stars
- Each workshop was made up of children from the same year but different classes. Name badges ensured that facilitators could interact directly with different pupils. Researchers used first names (instead of conventional Mr/Mrs Surname) to create a more informal, friendly and fun atmosphere. 2. Printed screenshots from familiar and unfamiliar websites and programs were provided to be cut up and incorporated into new designs. Children were also encouraged to draw elements and annotate their design. We had both group and 1:1 discussions with children during the sessions. 3. Children explained their designs to the group, why they had chosen different elements, and what features and functions they wanted their website to provide. 4. Children were shown 7 different designs of existing Espresso modules and provided verbal feedback about their likes and dislikes. Pupils were asked about the colour schemes, characters and features of the potential designs. 5. Pupils were thanked for their input and rewarded with a certificate, stickers and a pencil case which they were very excited about.
- Lesley How did it go? Each of the groups had no trouble getting into the design exercise – there was barely any hesitation to get started cutting and sticking. Makes a change from starting workshops with adults with a carefully designed ‘icebreaker’ activity to get them into the creative mindset.
- Lesley - All of the children worked individually and produced their own designs. There was a really wide range of designs.
- Lesley - They were given a free rein to design anything they want as long as it was broadly an educational website. They were able to design websites that followed their own interests – this one was a sports facts website that had facts, photos, videos, drawings and a quiz.
- Lesley - Times table rock stars came up quite frequently
- Lesley - Interesting to see how many chose to include a search bar or other navigation for getting around.
- Lesley Log ins were expected so they could secure their work and rewards.
- Lesley
- Lesley - Most of the groups were from different classes within a year group so they knew each other but weren’t close friends. There were 2 who slipped through the net and were close friends who sat next to each other and produced almost identical designs.
- Lesley
- Ghazaleh Involve pupils from a range of different schools which utilise a variety of digital resources. Repeat similar exercise with pupils from other key stages (Foundation and KS1). Additional exercise to interview teachers to understand teacher requirements for the pupil view, both minimum and desirable requirements. Create initial mock ups incorporating learnings from above research. Use mock ups as probes in follow up workshops.
- Ghazaleh The use of visual element and cut outs unlocks the ability for pupils to verbalise their thoughts and feelings. Children have internal battle between what is engaging versus what they aspire to. And that creates a challenge to the best balance in the terms of visual assets. Group work lets children discuss and be inspired by each other and makes it a fun activity.
- Lesley Learn as much as you can ahead of meeting them This allows you to do your homework on the things they are used to doing and using. 2. Make it creative – give them physical resources and get them to make things or move things around Let the activity lead and the conversation will flow around it 3. Be mindful of the social structures of the group. 4. Be ready to have your assumptions challenged.
- Workshops with groups of pupils Design exercise Create their own educational websites using their favourite websites as inspiration Informally discuss their designs as they take shape to find out why they are including different elements
- Learn as much as you can ahead of meeting them This allows you to do your homework on the things they are used to doing and using. 2. Make it creative – give them physical resources and get them to make things or move things around Let the activity lead and the conversation will flow around it 3. Be mindful of the social structures of the group. 4. Be ready to have your assumptions challenged.
- Ghazaleh The use of visual element and cut outs unlocks the ability for pupils to verbalise their thoughts and feelings. Children have internal battle between what is engaging versus what they aspire to. And that creates a challenge to the best balance in the terms of visual assets. Group work lets children discuss and be inspired by each other and makes it a fun activity.
- Lesley Learn as much as you can ahead of meeting them This allows you to do your homework on the things they are used to doing and using. 2. Make it creative – give them physical resources and get them to make things or move things around Let the activity lead and the conversation will flow around it 3. Be mindful of the social structures of the group. 4. Be ready to have your assumptions challenged.