UX Design
AI for Educators
Duration
Sept – Dec 2023
Team
Tori, Chiara, Keyi (LTXD students at NYU)
My Role
UX designer
Target Users / Audience
Elementary school teachers
Overview
How can we support educators to embrace AI in the classroom? Through immersive UX research with elementary school teachers, we have gained insights into their needs and desires regarding AI integration in classroom. Armed with this knowledge, we have crafted a prototype website, designed to empower teachers with the ability to seamlessly incorporate AI into their teaching practices.
1. User Research
We have conducted literature review, interviews and survey with elementary school teachers to obtain qualitative and quantitative data on their opinions and attitudes towards AI in education.
Desktop Research
We have identified several common applications of AI in the classroom, which include:
Generating class materials / lesson plan
Providing personalized tutoring
Gamification / Immersive learning
Improving students’ writing & grammar
Automated essay grading
Survey
Learnings from our survey are as follows:
About 75% of those surveyed say their limited time hinders their exploration of AI.
Many of those surveyed say that the frustration experienced when utilizing AI stems from the lack of knowledge, guidance, and support.
The primary tasks for which those surveyed seek AI assistance include lesson planning, specifically differentiation, and using AI as an interactive teaching tool in class.
Interviews
Learnings from our interviews:
Most stressed that AI would be best as a supplementary tool, helping save time.
Most were interested in learning more and mentioned AI is inevitable.
Interviewees talked about their major concerns being loss of critical thinking skills, accuracy/misconceptions, and safety.
Insights
Limited Time
Elementary school teachers often struggle with limited time, which serves as a significant obstacle to their exploration of new tools. This emphasizes the need for ease of adoption for new AI tools.
Frustration Linked to AI Knowledge Gap
Many elementary school teacher attribute their frustration to a lack of adequate knowledge about AI. This shows that readily-available education around AI for Education is needed.
Common Uses of AI in Education - Supplementary
The primary applications envisioned by elementary school teachers for AI in education are lesson planning, specifically differentiation, and using AI as an interactive teaching tool in class. This suggests that these types of tools or education on how to do these tasks would be most utilized.
Current Low Adoption due to Concerns
Relatively few teachers have experimented with AI due to concerns related to misuse, privacy, security, and disinformation. This emphasizes the need to combat these concerns with safeguards or education.
2. Empathy Map
We have consolidated the survey and interview results and created an empathy map to better visualize users’ needs and desires.
3. Persona
We have created a few personas based on our research results to better understand and empathize with our target audience.
4. How Might Me?
We have come up with 4 “How Might We?” questions and corresponding recommendations to guide our next steps.
5. Sketching
Our team has done a design studio and come up with different sketches of our potential prototypes.
6. Storyboard
We have designed different storyboards to visually map out the user's experience with our prototype.
7. Usability Test
We have come up with a low-fi prototype, a website that provides educators with a personalized and self-paced learning experience around AI.
We then conducted usability tests on a few target users and noticed a few common problems of our initial prototype:
Fail to locate the lesson plans
Fail to identify differences between the icons on the Learning Path
Fail to locate the correct button to start the lesson
8. Heuristic Evaluation
We have conducted a heuristic evaluation and noticed the following results:
Visibility of system status
There are progress bars showing learners’ learning progress.
→ Severity level: 2
User control and freedom
There is no button for users to go backward.
→ Severity level: 4
Consistency and standards
The design is consistent & minimalist.
→ Severity level: 1
Aesthetic and minimalist design
More pictures and graphic design with consistent colours need to be added.
→ Severity level: 3
Process
Final Deliverable(s)
Our final product is a website that provides educators with a personalized and self-paced learning experience around AI. We chose to include a few features such as a learning path, a resource section, experience points, and streaks in order to fit our users’ needs and motivate them to come back to learn more.
Our hi-fi prototype design builds upon the successful elements of the lo-fi prototype design with a few improvements of other areas. Navigation improvements include enlarging the starting button for easier lesson initiation and adding backward navigation and error correction buttons. A search bar was included in the resources section based on user requests, along with a revamped visual filtering system. Progress enhancements include displaying remaining steps in the account creation process and integrating the practice section for better work tracking. Aesthetically, calming colors were chosen, contrasting with yellow highlights, while negative space and minimalist learner icons were employed for simplicity and engagement. Consistency was maintained through repetitive design elements.