Zoom Redesign
A research practicum aimed to derive insights from observation sessions, design activities, and interviews. Insights were consolidated into redesign recommendations.
Role
Timeframe
Researcher
10 weeks
Methods
Observation
Design Activities
Interviews
Research Questions
Identifying Remote Learning Pain Points
What are some of the barriers and pain points that elementary school students from grades K-3 experience when using Zoom to learn remotely at home?
This question seeks to identify both the design pain points experienced by young students on Zoom as well as some of the barriers and environmental challenges young students may be experiencing in their homes that impact their ability to learn.
Translating Findings into Redesign Recommendations
How might Zoom be redesigned to provide a more engaging learning experience for young students?
Using the insights from the first research question, this question seeks to derive recommendations for how Zoom could be redesigned to improve the remote learning experience for young students.
Methodology
Method 1: Questionnaires
Rationale: Questionnaires allow for preliminary filtering of participants and better preparation of materials before the observation sessions.
Process: Caregivers who responded to recruitment methods were given questionnaires which gleaned general information about them and their child. Responses were used to tailor observation session parameters such as lesson plans.
Excerpt of Intake Questionnaire (Method 1)
Method 2: Observation
Rationale: Observation is ideal over something like a survey since it can be difficult to survey young children about their experiences with Zoom.
Process: Observed how young students interacted with the platform firsthand and took notes on the pain points they encountered. Observation was conducted by simulating a remote learning environment—caregivers would play the role of instructor using the given lesson plan on the other side of the Zoom call, and students were observed in a separate room.
Method 3: Design Activities
Rationale: Design activities give the participants a say in what is being designed for them.
Process: After each lesson, the students were invited to participate in a design activity where they were prompted to think about the pain points with using Zoom.
Sample of Design Activity Response (Method 3)
Method 4: Interviews
Rationale: Observation of students is insufficient to collect data on their remote learning environment. Interviewing also allowed the opportunity to gather additional pain points, as caregivers were likely the ones helping the students circumvent them.
Process: Interviewed caregivers to learn more about the home environment from which the young students had been remotely learning.
Research Findings
Key Findings
From the observation sessions, design activities, and interviews, the following pain points were identified:
Young students have a hard time remembering to use the mute/unmute function.
Young students have difficulty finding the “raise hand” feature.
When the student cannot not hear the teacher, they have a hard time getting the teacher's attention.
Redesign Recommendations
Based on the insights gained from the observation sessions, design activities and interviews, I recommend the following redesign changes be made to Zoom in order to minimize the interruptions young students experience throughout the lesson:
Make key important features such as the mute, video, and raise hand buttons more obvious and noticeable.
Reduce the amount of features on the menu bar so that students have an easier time accessing the key features.
Add an accessible button for students to quickly signal to their teacher that they can't hear them.
Currently, buttons on the menu bar are very small, and important features like the mute button are off to the side, making it less noticeable and more difficult for young students to access. Additionally, there are many features on the menu bar that aren’t crucial for young students learning online, as circled in the screenshot below.
Although these features are important for older users, for young students, these could end up just posing as a distraction and act as barriers for students to find the buttons they actually need. Instead, frequently used features such as the mute, video, and raise hand buttons should be front and center of the menu bar and be made bigger and more accessible for young children who have small hands and limited dexterity.
Reflection and Learnings
My motivation for this project and for creating this research study is to think about how a platform like Zoom, which wasn’t designed originally with children in mind, can be designed to be for children. In the case that something like the COVID-19 pandemic were to happen again, I wanted people to think about how we can better prepare for moving young students to online learning environments.
Due to time and financial constraints, there were several limitations to this study. A major limitation is the small sample size, which makes this research non-generalizable to a greater population. There may also be some participant bias in the data as one of the parents who participated is a coworker of mine and the other is a family I used to nanny for. Another major limitation is that the online lesson was not very representative of a real-life class over Zoom since there was only one student and the lesson was limited to 30 minutes. Additionally, because the teacher in the observation session was the student’s caregiver and not their actual teacher, they may have behaved differently than they would have in an actual online classroom.
In terms of the potential future work related to this project, an observation session done with a teacher and a classroom full of students would better mimic a real-life lesson and improve the validity of the data. Since I am not a teacher, it would also be beneficial to work with teachers of different grade levels on adapting their existing lesson plans to be used for the study. Teachers could also be interviewed to understand the pain points of Zoom from the teaching perspective. Additional future work based on this research would be to implement the redesign recommendations and test them with users. In order for the success of future work related to this research and for the continuation of this study, funding would be needed to compensate participants.