Briefing

There is unsatisfactory communication between teachers and parents. Teachers complain that they have difficulty getting information to parents. Parents have a hard time reaching teachers, and teachers are sometimes overwhelmed by overly-involved parents.

ConnectEd is an online tool that allows parents and teachers to communicate and share information.  

We will first give you two (2) tasks to complete as a teacher, Ms. Frizzle, and then two (2) tasks to complete as a parent, Arnold’s mom.

  • You are free to stop at any time.
  • Feel free to ask us any questions you have at any point.
  • All results will be confidential/anonymous.  
  • We would love to hear your comments.

Scenario Tasks

A.  Teacher:

1) Ms. Frizzle Task 1:

TODO: Send permission slip about ice skating trip to all parents of class 3A. (date: March 19)

2) Ms. Frizzle Task 2:

After receiving parent responses, find out which parents have signed the permission slip.

TODO: Check which parents have signed and resend it to the parents who have not yet responded.

B. Parent:

1) Arnold’s mom Task 1:

Arnold’s mom wants to make sure that she is aware of all her children’s special activities in school this week. She also wants to check what Arnold will be missing this Tuesday morning, as he has a dentist appointment.  

TODO: View the schedule for all her children.

2) Arnold’s mother Task 2:

Since Arnold has a dentist appointment, his mother would like to…

TODO: Inform Ms. Frizzle that Arnold will be coming late to school on Tuesday.

Prototype photos

The following photos show our paper prototype during the second iteration.

 

Teacher

This is the login screen we showed for the user to sign in as a teacher.


When the user logs in to a teacher account, this is the home page he/she sees initially.  It displays any news/announcements, has buttons for each class that the user teaches, and has four buttons which allow the teacher to perform actions for any class (not any class in particular):  

  1. The messages button allows the teacher to send a message to a parent of any of her students.
  2. The create new form button allows the teacher to send a form (typically something that the parents need to sign or respond to, such as a permission slip) to all the parents of students in one class or multiple classes.
  3. the view forms button allows the teacher to see a list of all the forms he/she has sent to parents in the past.  Then, he/she can click on a specific form to see which parents have signed the form.
  4. The calendar button allows the teacher to see her schedule for all her classes.


This is the teacher's class homepage. If the user clicked on one of the class buttons on the main teacher's home page, he/she will be brought to this screen, which contains options for what the teacher can do for this specific class.


When the teacher clicks on the "create new form" button either from the main homepage or from a specific class' homepage, this screen is shown.  This picture shows the dropdown menu for the form type field.


Still on the page for creating new forms, this picture shows the screen after the user has chosen the form type, typed in the activity/event, checked the classes the form should be sent to, and clicked on the date field or "select date" button.


Once the user has entered all the information, he/she can click the "preview" button to see the text that will be sent to parents, as shown here. The preview is in a text box, so that the teacher can add more text to the form and/or edit the text that is already there.


This is the teacher's "view forms" page, which can be accessed by clicking on the "view forms" button either on the main teacher's homepage or on the homepage of a specific class.  Navigating to the "view forms" page from the main homepage should show all of the user's forms for all classes, while clicking on it from a class' homepage should display only the forms for that class.


Once the user clicks on the ice skating form, he/she can see a list of all the students in the class, with an indication of the status of their forms (approved, denied, or pending).  From this page, the teacher can also resend the form to parents who have not yet responded.


If the user clicked on the arrow next to "form status" on the previous page, the entries in the table are sorted by form status.

 

Parent


The sign-in screen was shown again for the user to log in as a parent.


This is the parent's main homepage, from which he/she can see news/announcements, complete tasks relevant to any or all of his/her children, or select a specific child.


If the user clicked on Arnold's photo in the previous screen, he/she is brought to this page, which is the homepage for Arnold.


Clicking on the calendar button from the parent's main homepage would display this calendar, with all the children's activities shown with a different color for each child.  
Clicking on the calendar button from a specific child's homepage (such as Arnold's homepage shown in the previous picture) would show this same calendar, but only with Arnold's activities.


Clicking on the messages button from either the main homepage or a child's homepage allows the parent to write a message to his/her child's teacher(s).

Observations

For each iteration, we interviewed four users.

First Iteration:

  1. There was some confusion in differentiating between the “Forms” button and the “Messages” button. Many users were not sure under what category a Permission Slip would fall. One user suggested that we split the button. Another suggested that we split them up into “Send to all Parents” and “Send to One Parent”
  2. Hovering feature on the forms button presents a Safety issue. The user can click before hovering feature is fully displayed and will not realize what was clicked.
  3. Need some indication after a form is created or sent that action was successful.
  4. Some users did not find the “Resend to all Pending" button on the "create forms" page.
  5. A lot of confusion between the “?” and “X” indications in “View Forms”.
  6. Calendar issues:
    1. Days not clickable.
    2. Starting on Monday.
  7. Some suggested autocomplete and some suggested dropdown for “To” field in “Messages”.
  8. People liked the clean and intuitive feel of the site. The large icons and low depth were also appreciated.
  9. Some users were confused between the choosing of a class before or after navigating to “Messages” or “Forms”.
  10. Better not to use abbreviations, such as the children’s initials on Homepage.
  11. Was suggested that we use different colors for each child’s activities on the schedule page.
  12. Must make pictures clickable and this feature must be learnable.
  13. One user tried to hover over buttons that had no hover feature.  (It was confusing to have the "forms" button change upon hovering, but the other buttons not change.)
  14. On the create forms page, Preview button’s feature was not clear to user.

Second Iteration

  1. “Messages” vs “Forms” – which contains Permission Slips? This was still not clear.
  2. “Resend to all Pending" button – user still didn't notice
  3. “Select Date” button confusing.
  4. Need a way to switch between children on Calendar page.
  5. "To" field in “Messages” should be a dropdown instead of autocomplete (user also expects autocomplete).
  6. "Forms" page – selecting classes option (checkboxes) confusing since already selected class on previous page.
  7. Teacher's homepage – are buttons clickable?
  8. Would like to have the option to send a form to some (not all) parents.
  9. Calendar task – user went to Arnold first before selecting "Calendar".  We then showed only Arnold's activities, but user expected to see all the children's activities on the calendar.
  10. Would have liked an indication of today's date on calendar.
  11. "Back to Homepage" button could be shortened to "Back".
  12. Suggestion: have all buttons visible on side of screen on all sections.
  13. Didn't realize children's photo icons were clickable.
  14. Would have clicked on Calendar in order to submit a permission slip for a specific date.
  15. Preview option in Forms was not clear to user; not apparent that he could edit the message.  User also not sure where to approve/deny part of message.
  16. Would like to see Sent indication after sending the Permission Slip.
  17. Liked “Resend” feature.
  18. Legend to explain check, “?” and “X” was not visible enough for user to notice.
  19. (Parent) user liked the pictures of the kids.
  20. Add CC field to copy message to self.

Prototype iteration

We tested four users in our first iteration. During this iteration, we noticed that several users encountered similar problems. In order to eliminate users’ confusion and frustration, we changed our design and tested it again on four different users.  

1st iteration -  issue

2nd iteration - fix

Hovering over the “forms” button was a safety issue. Users could accidentally click on the wrong side of the button, especially if they clicked on the button before noticing that hovering split the button into two parts.

In order to maintain consistency with the rest of the buttons and to prevent wrong clicks, the hovering capability was removed and the forms button was changed to two static buttons.

Users found the calendar confusing because it started on Monday.

Calendar was modified to start on Sunday.

Users found it hard to tell which activities in the calendar correspond to which child.

Different kids were given different colored entries in the calendar. A legend was included at the bottom of the calendar (in our prototype, there is blue for Liz and orange for Arnold).

Users complained that they can’t create a new form from the “view forms” screen.

A “create new form” button was added to the teacher’s “view forms” page.

On the parent’s homepage, users asked to have the child’s name in addition to the child’s picture and first initial.

Each child’s name was added underneath the child’s picture.

In the teacher’s “view forms” screen to see which parents signed the form, some users did not understand the difference between X and ?.

A legend was added to the screen to explain that check means the parent approved, X means the parent denied permission (i.e. the child may not participate in the trip or activity), and ? means the parent has not yet responded.

Users complained that there was no “message sent” indication after sending a message.

A “message sent” indication was added.

After a teacher sends a form to parents, where should the website redirect the teacher? (The options would be to stay on the "create form" page, to go back to the teacher's homepage, or to go to the teacher's "view forms" page.)

We decided to redirect the user to the homepage, with a banner at the top of the page indicating that the form was sent.

Future Changes

After the feedback we received from users during our second iteration of the paper prototype, there are some additional fixes we would like to make in the future:

  • Change the word “Forms” for clarification
  • Add icon buttons to the side of every page, for more efficient navigation
  • On the “create new form” page, make it clear that the user may add more text to the form (as currently this functionality is available by clicking “preview,” but the preview button does not make this functionality apparent)
  • Include text such as “I understand the risks of the activity” in permission slips
  • On the teacher's "view forms" page, perhaps eliminate the column for the "resend" buttons and simply place the "resend" buttons next to the "?".

In addition, we would also like to try to implement the other features planned for our website, such as grades and assignments.

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1 Comment

  1. Unknown User (jks@mit.edu)

    • Very well done.
    • Well-built prototypes that reflected the best of your GR2 designs.
    • In general, you could have made more significant changes between your prototype iterations, in order to get the most out of user testing.
    • But your future changes sound like great ideas - specifically, allowing for more global navigation (e.g. calendar doesn't have to be nested underneath each student's page) and working on more breadth (grades, assignments).
    • The dual-button for forms (new and view) seems a bit redundant, considering you have a 'create new form' button at the top of your 'view forms' page. Why not just change the button to 'Forms', and you can both create and view from that second page, where the 'create' button is prominent so users don't miss it?
      • This question will also extend to other things: creating new and viewing existing assignments, grades, etc.