view full project website Thinkspace
A solution to support critical thinking in AP BiologyOver the course of 8 months during the spring and summer of 2011, I worked along with four other masters students at CMU's MHCI to research, design, and implement a solution demonstrating a client's AI technology in a way that also enhances the learning cycle of AP biology students.
researchStarting as novices within the domains of biology and education, we spent our first four months observing and interviewing teachers and students both inside and outside the classroom. We also used techniques like diary studies to gain insight into how students studied at home where we couldn't observe them. After observing 9 teachers and 24 students from across 7 different high schools, as well as conducting a literature review and competitive analysis, we synthesized our observations to highlight what we saw as the important considerations when designing for AP biology.
After discussing these observations with our client, we focused in on socratic questioning, the way that teachers address students' questions not by giving them the answer but by breaking down the question into it's components, as a technique that could be a valuable jumping off point for our design phase.
ideationWe then began ideation, ...
prototypingFinally, having arrived at our final concept, we iterated on our rough idea until we reached a high fidelity prototype. Moving from rough concept to paper prototype to a final functional iPad app, we constantly took our sketches and prototypes to users to both validate that our idea had potential and to ensure that we were creating a good implementation of our idea itself.
Our final solution provided a workspace within which students could research, organize and explore information which ultimately would help them solve a complex synthesis question that they were trying to answer. This took the form of an iPad app which used the metaphor of notecards to represent pieces of information. ...
