+
Thank you! I'll get back to you shortly.
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
In 2020, the pandemic had students like me bracing for a school year dominated by Zoom – not the most exciting prospect. That's when Notesology was born, a nationwide initiative I and a team of fellow students created to transform online education into something accessible and enjoyable for all. With digital inequity in education on the rise, we unveiled a new solution crafted by students, for students, to bridge the digital divide.
Scope
User Experience
User Research
Usability Testing
Interface Design
In exchange for volunteer hours, students and educators can submit educational resources which are used to structure classes for students in low-income neighborhoods. After mapping this model, we identified two unique user groups: volunteers and students.
Our research allowed us to find that students want an easily accessible educational platform offering relevant educational resources that's organized in a course-specific structure. Prospective volunteers are also more likely to contribute resources when they can easily grasp the process, minimizing their time and effort put into the submission process.
We approached the site's IA by structuring the content to learning models, featuring volunteer-created resources to teach and test users' understanding. We moved away from the blanket acceptance of all notes, having volunteers sign up to contribute notes for specific vacant subjects or topics.
We conducted 9 user tests with students who used the beta version of Notesology using a Mid-Fi prototype we created to see what changes we could make to improve the site structure without entirely losing the product's recognizability.
Our revamped product flow breaks down subjects and units way more. While adding more steps to our may seem redundant, the learning portal uses step-by-step flow to allow students to take time to understand every bit of educational content provided to them without overwhelming them with too many decisions.
While our learning journey for students needed to be more robust and step-by-step to avoid overwhelming students, our volunteer portal needed to stay as simple as can be to encourage more people to volunteer. By keeping the submission form visibly short, we avoided daunting prospective volunteers with a lengthy and confusing platform.
