Focus

Mobile APP for increasing the concentration of college students in class

Teams

individual

Tools

Figma, Sketch,
Principle,
Miro,
Illustrator

Timeline

Oct - Dec 2020

Methods

Survey,
Think-Aloud,
Interview,
Affinity diagram,
Storyboard,
Prototyping


Let's talk about Focus!
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The Solution
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1/Focus
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   Student/ Individual   

Choose your focus mode before the lesson and start focusing. The timer will stop when you are distracted from using your phone in the middle of the lesson, and the house building scene will be paused.


2/Reword

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   Student / Individual  

Complete a set of focus time and you will be rewarded with a random building. See, every building in the town is a record of your focus time.


3/Focus Team

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   Student / Group  

You can build up focus teams by randomly teaming up on auto-match courses or teaming up with friends. Embark on a long journey of building wondrous structures.


4/Share & Donate

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   Student/ Individual    

The ranking can show the results of your focus, meanwhile, the time gained from focus can accumulate Focus gold coins, donate your gold coin and build a real building for someone in need.


5/Track & Analysis

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   Teacher   

Focus can track students' concentration levels in the classroom and perform long-term concentration analysis to help teachers make timely adjustments to content and teaching styles.

How I got  there

Background

poor classroom listening is a problem for college students, especially for students with low self-control...

The development of mobile network brings more and more entertainment, we can keep in touch with friends, browse the web, videos, etc. anytime and anywhere, but it also affects students' concentration in listening to the lectures. I start with a broad perspective, including how students listen to lectures nowadays and how they use their phones. Through a study of the literature, I found that:

21%

60%

78%

of class time using a digital device for an unrelated activity like email or social media

college students admit they may be addicted to their cell phone- they get agitated when its not in sight

of teens check their devices at least hourly, and 72 % of teens feel the need to immediately respond to messages

Questionnaire Survey

The use of mobile phones affects the efficiency of some college students

In order to understand the concentration of college students in class and the reasons that affect their concentration in class, I conducted an online questionnaire survey with 70 college students, and I received 61 effective feedbacks. Discount coupon are used as rewards to attract qualified responses:

Affinity Diagram

Social relationships and teaching quality are the biggest influences

I conducted 5 interviews with the target users, and adopted the method of 5W2H to expand the information of the questionnaire survey. Through the interview, I hope to know more about→
I created an affinity diagram to find congruence across my interview. I was able to gather a series of meaningful insights through my affinity diagramming session.

Interview

3 Insights

I summarized the user feedback I got from the affinity chart into the following 3 points：
   Insight 1   
   Insight 2   
   Insight 3   
Users with low self-control are more likely to be influenced
Mobile phone use is mainly affected by the friends around users and the lack of motivation to learn
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Users mainly use social software to chat
In class, users use social Apps to chat with their friends about things around them
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Teachers are also important stakeholders
‍The teacher's teaching also has a great influence on the students' concentration in class
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Observational Research

Students' concentration should be enhanced before and near the end of class

To further understand users' cell phone usage and time distribution in the classroom, I decided to conduct an observation session. I observed 3 different classes (45min/class) and then mapped the user journeys to find the opportunity point of design.
Speaking English Course
- 90 min (1 class break)
Political Science Course
- 90 min (1 class break)
Architectural Design Course
- 120 min (2 class break)
   Insight 4   
key time points：the class is about to start and the end
We found that during the course of the lesson, the main problem of the users was that they were too slow to get into the lesson, and their attention was low in the second half of the lesson especially towards the end of the lesson, which should be intervened.

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HOW MIGHT WE
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Literature Research

Three Grounding Design Approaches

Through the research, I analyze that the main reasons why the target users can't pay attention are lack of motivation and influence of people around them. I leveraged the following behavior theories as structural bases for my designing concepts.

1/ Fogg's behavior model

I hope to use the BJ FOJJ behavioral model to give the meaning of focus, giving users more motivation to listen to the class and helping them to develop good listening habits. At the same time, I want to give users some Triggers before and at the end of the class to help them get into the listening state.
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2/ Self-fulling prophecy

By using the BJ FOJJ behavior model, users with low self-control are motivated to learn. When they develop good study habits, they can re-influence new users with lower self-control, eventually creating a virtuous circle among students. create a virtuous circle.

Ideation

Ideation

4 Needs and 7 Concepts

Based on the previous 4 insights, I proposed 4 needs that users need most, and 7 concepts. Then I sketched 7 storyboards based on these 7 concepts.

Sketch Ideation

Storyboard based on the 7 concepts

Concept Testing

Feedbacks from Speed dating sessions

Through the speed dating sessions, I found that my participants were very optimistic about ideas #02( buildings represent the focus time), #04 (group together to focus), #07(teacher adjusted the way they taught).
Users mentioned that the entity rewards were more attractive.
I set up an activity to participate in the construction of charity schools.
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   Feedbacks   
Group together
Users think that the cooperation among real friends is more motivating for them than the teammates they find online
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I designed 2 group modes. Users can search by keywords (e.g. course's name, physics, programming) to find classmates who are taking similar/same courses to set group. Or through the course automatically match related course students.

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   Feedbacks   
Reward after completion
Modified functions：
01/ Game concept of town building
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The concept is to provide users with more attractive and reduce the performance comparison of frustration, I want to through the town set up to give users more interaction and a sense of achievement.
02/ Social circles motivate each other
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The concept is to bring users more interaction through the construction of the town. The social circle can be a platform to share the achievements of the town construction. It can also be a team platform where users can make more friends and monitor each other's progress.
03/ Focused situation feedback for teacher

The concept is to provide the teacher with the students' immediate concentration in class and provide the teacher with a period of summary of the students' concentration after class to help the teacher adjust the teaching strategy in time.

Prototyping and Testing

From Low-Fi to High-Fi...

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1 Low-Fi Iteration
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I ran seven usability tests to get feedback about the interface and design flow
2 Mid-Fi Iteration
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In this step, users mainly asked key questions about Concept #1, #4, and #5

Prototyping and Testing

Low-Fi Iteration

After finishing the first round prototype, I ran seven usability tests to get feedback about the interface and design flow. I also got constructive feedback and suggestions, which helped me get lots of insights and findings. The major insights and improvements  I made fell into three categories: Unclear information, information redundancy, and interface details.

Ideation

Mid Fidelity Prototyping

Use the reward to build the town
Use the reward to build the town
Use the reward to build the town
Use the reward to build the town
Use the reward to build the town
Use the reward to build the town

Prototyping and Testing

Mid-Fi Iteration

Iteration1: How to start focusing?


I initially set up an initiation ritual of holding the phone upside down.
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Problem 1 : users  did not know how to start their focus task.
Problem 2 : user said that the inverted phone format would prevent them from using essential tasks such as taking pictures to record.

Iteration: Start button can help users better understand how to open the application and use it smoothly.

Iteration2: What is my contribution to the Charity School?

Problem: Users mentioned that the Donate a School page shows that they donated to several schools confused them. They want to know the exact contribution.

Iteration 1: I adjusted the statistics of donated charity schools and set the fundraising amount for each charity school. Each coin donated by users can be displayed on the donation page.
Iteration 2: Added the progress bar that help users to see more information about the donations.

Iteration3: What are the rewards of forming a focus team and how do I choose my focus team?

Problem: Users wished there would be richer rewards for group building and that they could know about them in advance.

Iteration: I set up alerts for the rewards on the group page so that users can see them before they form a group.

Final Design

1/Focus
‍

   Student/ Individual   

Choose your focus mode before the lesson and start focusing. The timer will stop when you are distracted from using your phone in the middle of the lesson, and the house building scene will be paused.

2/Reword
‍

   Student / Individual  

Complete a set of focus time and you will be rewarded with a random building. See, every building in the town is a record of your focus time.

3/Focus Team
‍

   Student / Group  

You can build up focus teams by randomly teaming up on auto-match courses or teaming up with friends. Embark on a long journey of building wondrous structures.

4/Donate
‍

   Student/ Individual    

The ranking can show the results of your focus, meanwhile, the time gained from focus can accumulate Focus gold coins, donate your gold coin and build a real building for someone in need.

5/Track & Analysis
‍

   Teacher   

Focus can track students' concentration levels in the classroom and perform long-term concentration analysis to help teachers make timely adjustments to content and teaching styles.

Design System
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Project Takeaways

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Gamified design
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By analyzing addictive social software, we introduced the same mechanisms of the addiction model into the process of focused experience. For example, random house rewards are given for completing focus tasks, and when users accumulate a lot of focus time, they can redeem it for virtual currency to build campuses in poor areas, etc.

Next Step

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Explore forms beyond the app
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We find that cell phones, as a medium of contact, still interfere with students' classroom learning to some extent. In particular, when students want to check their progress, it may trigger them to play with their phones. Perhaps there are other forms of Focus, such as an Apple Watch app or a phone case.

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Focus

Mobile APP for increasing the concentration of college students in class

Let's connect!
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newmoonzhang1995@gmail.com
Atlanta, GA, US



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© Luna (Xinyue) Zhang 2023
ScenarioResearchIdeationTestingFinal Design