Case Study
Pupils
At the beginning of each new semester or school year, teachers are faced with the challenge of remembering names for a large number of new students. This design concept proposes a product solution for an experience to help an educator match faces to names, with the goal of shortening the time needed to reach complete un-aided accuracy.
INSIGHTS
Feeling "name-learning-challenged", many teachers find it hard to match faces with names, or to think of a student's name when two of them meet.
Educators are very busy with lots of duties, which makes it even more difficult to allocate some time to get engaged with name practicing methods.
PRODUCT FRAMEWORK
Based on the collected insights and time considerations, the framework of the product was kept very simple and focused.
The primary goal is to let school teachers have an easy access to a mobile tool that enables them to create class rosters with photos and practice their new students' names. Pupils App consists of three main parts - namely classes, student directory and cheat sheets.
Greeting and encouraging the user for the first time to start creating class rosters. Illustration: Hangouts
CLASS ROSTERS
Having class rosters inside the app is an essential step to be able start practicing student names.
Given the fact that the average number of students in a class in the U.S is around 24, and each teacher having 3 to 5 new classes per year, entering details of large number of students can be heavy and frustrating. Therefore, Pupils App aims to provide multiple ways to take and / or import student photos, as well as three easy-to-use methods to enter student names while creating class rosters.
Teacher adds a class name and / or code to start creating the roster
A simplified user flow showing how educators add new students to a class roster
User starts by adding a photo / snapshot of a student with camera, from the gallery or via Dropbox
An example view of an educator taking a snapshot of a student's photo from the school's system
After confirming the image, the user is asked to submit the name of the student
The teacher prefers to pronounce the name of Aaron rather than capturing or typing it
After adding the first student, the teacher is given a second card which she uses to place an image of the next student
An example view of the teacher typing the student's name
For the third student, the teacher wants to try out capturing method for submitting her name
Capturing the name of the student from her homework paper
Teacher confirms instantly-transcribed name when it is accurate
Users can swipe back-and-forth to edit previously added students
Eventually the educator generates class rosters that are ready to practice!
PRACTICES
It is a common and proven practice to gamify a learning process to give a better sense of accomplishment and increase motivation. Pupils App aims to provide a light and structured learning experience with joyful memory exercises.
Having small goals allows people to reach their ultimate goal rapidly. To avoid educators getting overwhelmed, the application auto-generates proportionally distributed practice sessions for each class. To keep teachers learning and encouraged, their progress is clearly indicated and rewarded.
To ease the learning process, each class is distributed into several practice sessions with multiple learning activities
Educator familiarizing with couple of new students' names and faces at the beginning of a session
Later on the teacher is asked to choose the correct student name for a given photo
Example views showing different states for correct and wrong answers. The card auto-swipes after couple of seconds.
The teacher is now asked to choose the correct student photo for a given name
Guessing right the first time (left), guessing wrong twice (right). The card auto-swipes after couple of seconds.
After sufficient familiarity and practice, it's time to type and masterize student names.
Teacher types the name of the student shown in the given photo
Example views showing different states for correctly and wrongly typed answers
Teachers may tap "I don't remember" button, which reveals the students name - to be retyped
Each completed session is marked based on performance. Completing all reveals another session to strengthen the weak names.
Knowledge level for each student can be seen individually from the roster tab. Classes can also be edited, shared and archieved.
HELPERS
Many psychology researchers believe that correlating a name with a human characteristic or an adjective helps one to remember that person's name faster and more accurately.
It might be too overwhelming for an educator being forced to enter bunch of additional information for a large number of students. Therefore, Pupils App is designed in a way to optionally allow extra hints at a later stage and recommends this feature only when it might be relevant.
User is prompted to add a helper upon making consecutive mistakes on a particular student.
Next time the same student's card includes a tip indicator, which helps teacher guess her name right.
STUDENTS DIRECTORY
Students directory is designed for educators to quickly browse all of their new students. It gives teachers "everybody in one place" experience, where they can easily access, search and sort their pupils.
To bring more fun and usefulness to the application, students directory has a self practice functionality indicated with a dice fab. It simply calls out a photo of a random student. The teacher guesses and reveals the name. Then self-evaluates herself - which is quite helpful for a person in a learning process. This feature could be a perfect choice during the school breaks.
Full list of all of the new students that can be browsed, sorted and searched
Instant search results apply for a quicker browsing experience, which might also be helpful for the use at school.
Tapping the dice fab, the educator self practices to guess the name of randomly prompted student
CHEAT SHEETS
Cheat sheets function as a real-world guide to educators. For a superior name learning experience, they provide essential solutions to be applied in the class.
Not every memory jogging activity can be done via apps. Therefore, Pupils App's cheet sheets aim to assist teachers to facilitate interactive and fun activities with students for a faster "get to know each other" process.
List of cheat sheets (left) and detail view of a sample cheat sheet. Illustration by Hangouts.
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