User Research
Assignment G1
Project Overview
With everyone in our group being college-aged students going into new grad life, we’ve experienced the troubles and consequences of education and technology intertwining more and more. The utilization of platforms such as Discord, Slack, Google Calendar, Notion, and more have helped students like us to organize their tasks, keep track of deadlines, and more. But at the same time, this usage has kept our attention locked on screens, hour after hour, causing screen fatigue and burnout. This begs the question, can we use technology to keep us productive but also mitigate the effects of prolonged screen time?
Our team is interested in understanding how we can best help students streamline their productivity and to help limit burnout. As part of a solution, we’re interested in tracking productivity-related analytics. This might include what platforms users are on most for productivity, what times they are most productive, etc. We hope to communicate with the user the conditions that are most prime for their own best productivity. As part of a social component to keep people connected and accountable, we were interested in exploring a feature like Spotify’s social feature. With this feature, you can see what your friends are listening to currently. As part of our solution, we’d be interested in doing something similar where you can connect with your friends and see what they’re studying, how long they’re studying for, etc.
Target Audience
For a project of this scope, our target audience might concern older high school students and college students that utilize many online platforms to keep them engaged in academic work. Specifically, within this group, we’d be interested in targeting folks who are looking to manage their screen usage, get better time management, and increase their productivity.
User Research Methods
For our user research we decided to create a survey to send to students in our target audience. We chose a survey because we wanted to gauge as many individuals within our target demographic as possible within the time frame. The survey allowed us to ask a variety of different types of questions in a way that is not overwhelming to the participants. Our survey contained short answer questions, multiple choice, and ratings using the Likert scale. Our goal for the survey was to gain insight on productivity levels and study methods/habits targeted towards college aged students.
Summary of Participant Data
So far we have received 67 responses from participants, all from our intended users of College Graduate and Undergraduate students. Of those 67, 41 were seniors (4th years), 11 were juniors (3rd years), 7 were sophomores (2nd years), 5 were freshman (1st years), and 3 were graduate students. Our survey asked questions to better understand the study habits of our participants as well as explore what study tools they use. Some key insights were that:
- 63.6% of participants noted their average study session length was 1-2 hours.
- 78.8% of participants rated their productivity post studying session either a 3 or a 4 out of 5 where a 5 meant they were very satisfied with their productivity levels.
- 70.2% of participants rated their post study session burnout either a 4 or a 5 out of 5 where 5 is very burnt out.
- The two most common problems out participants encountered during a study session were distractions from your phone or other device and getting started on a task/assignment, respectively.
- The two most common study techniques used by our participants were listening to music and time blocking.
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73.1% of participants plan out time to work on assignments 1-3 days in advance.
- When asked about a perfect productivity tool the common themes from our participants answers were:
- Reminder systems
- App limitation/restrictive do not disturb
- Automatic prioritization of tasks
- Study technique integrations with calendar
- Accountability
- Some sort of reward or motivation aspect after studying
- The most commonly used tools were: planner/to-do list, Google Calendar, Discord, and Do Not Disturb.
- The most commonly used tools were: planner/to-do list, Google Calendar, Discord, and Do Not Disturb.
If there was a perfect productivity tool, what features would exist?
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For the tool that you use the most, how do you use it and what is the most compelling or useful feature that it has?
Design Challenges/Opportunities
Overall, our survey data showed that the majority of our participants still struggle with burnout at the end of a study session even when they feel satisfied with their productivity levels. They like to use calendar apps and to-do lists to keep track of their activities as well as Discord and Slack to communicate and study with friends. However, their biggest distractions also come from their phones and digital devices as well. Some participants also mentioned that it would be nice to have a “reward” at the end of a study session which would motivate them to be more productive. Additionally, a few mentioned that they like to study with others to keep themselves accountable. This suggests that developing an environment that is conducive to studying is important to our users. Through our research, we learned that the environment plays a large role in productivity, particularly due to easy access to distractions and lack of a social network.
We are interested in designing a social system that gamifies productivity in a way where users can share their progress with friends as an extrinsic motivator, as well as a reward aspect if users complete their goals for the day. However, we still want to tackle the issue of burnout which will be the most challenging part of our design. We may want to research more into the different causes of burnout that our participants face while studying. This may include an overwhelming amount of workload, unsupportive friends or colleagues, etc. We can then integrate strategies to proactively prevent burnout with the study tools that students typically use.