TUL!VE​
Client: Tilburg University (School project)
Date: June 2020
In collaboration with Remo Embaye, Rosalie Huiskamp, Tim Pluimers, Milou Straatman and Peisi Ying
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"In this project, the design team got the design challenge of designing an application that could motivate students to actively participate during the lectures."
Setting up the personas
Before conceptualizing an application, the design team created personas to get a perspective on which students would use the application in class. These personas were data-driven, and mainly qualitative data were used to create the personas (see Figure 1 and 2). Additionally, a survey examined similarities with students from other universities.
Figure 1. Male persona
Figure 2. Female persona
Concepting phase of TUL!VE
The design team conceptualized two designs. One concept focused on using gamification during lectures, as this concept made a quiz of the lecture's subject matter. The students will see what grade they have (an indication). Still, when they give a wrong answer, the application will also provide recommendations for the specific subject matter where the student answered incorrectly. The other concept is a live-discussion board where it is more accessible for students to ask questions, like other students' questions and take notes. In order to prevent overloading the teacher with questions, questions will be sent to the teacher if these questions are "liked" by ten other students. This application prevents evaluation apprehension among students as some students are "afraid" to ask questions during lectures (see Figure 3). This prevention of evaluation apprehension could result in the active participation of students during lectures. Eventually, this concept was chosen by the design team and was named "TUL!VE".
Figure 3. Storyboard of how the application could be used during a lecture
Creating a prototype of TUL!VE
The design team made a storyboard of how this concept would be used in practice, and eventually, the design team designed a prototype. Other students of various universities tested this prototype through an online survey. The results showed that students would like to use TUL!VE, as they find the concept easy and logical to use. The concept of TUL!VE fulfilled the wishes and needs of the students as they indicated that they were more likely to ask questions during lectures, and this may result in group discussions and more active participation during lectures. However, there were design recommendations. The recommendations were that the feature of making notes during class was not appealing, as students do not see an added value of this feature, the concept was not perceived as innovative, clarity of the "asking-question"-feature, improvement of the design, merging the "making notes"-feature with the "ask a question"-feature, applying a help-feature, making the save and send button clearer, and a clear introduction of how to use the application. Click here to open the "TUL!VE"-prototype.
Video. The prototype of TUL!VE