Time

2023

My Roles

UX Design

UI Design

Research

Team

UX Researcher

Developers

Data Analyst

Design System

WeVideo Desgin System

WeVideo Web App for Education

The WeVideo web app enables educators and students to create videos, GIFs, and podcasts, supports project-based learning with team assignments, and allows for instant feedback. Teachers can set up group projects, with students collaborating on shared video projects.

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Overview

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Project Goals

With schools on tight budgets, we aim to enhance classroom and assignment features to match the popularity of our video editing tools, offering comprehensive yet affordable software solutions.
Our goal is to boost user satisfaction by improving the user experience of assignment features and streamlining teachers' workflows for greater efficiency.

How can we make it easier for teachers to create collaboration teams in their classes?

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Challenge

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Teacher's workflow

I interviewed teachers who use WeVideo’s collaborative assignment features to create team projects. While the current product offers basic functionality, I discovered that it overlooks key user challenges—forcing teachers to find workarounds. Interestingly, some of their solutions sparked new ideas for improvement.

Teachers prep most of the assignment offline, and they always decide the team size while planning the assignment/project.

Sometimes teachers need to specify the team members, and sometimes they want randomize the team ( it could be a fun activity in the class! ).

If the team setup doesn't work, the teachers need to manage the teams and make sure the assignment/project keep on track.

Teacher's view

Teacher set the number of teams when creating an assignment. The teams' setup is based on the choices on students' side. However, teachers can modify the teams afterwards.

Student's view

Students will choose their teams to jump in the assignment. The rule is "first come first serve", so the last student won't have a choice.

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Current Product

Teachers

Prefer to appoint a leader or a reliable student within each team to ensure effective guidance.
Assign each student in each team
Students may not collaborate well and conflicts can arise at any stage of the process.
Provide students with transparency regarding the team formation process to promote a culture of equal opportunity within the class.
Ability to adjust the teams after published assignments
Limited time to learn new features

Students

Too shy to ask for joining a team
Being left in team up process
Teams where not everyone contributes
Feeling uncomfortable with some teammates

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Users' Struggles

Manage individual students and teams
Easy to modify the setups before and after the assignment is published
Provide a random selection option

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Feature Requirements

I did some research on other products that have a team setup feature, like Zoom, Teams, etc. I found there are two ways to set up the teams:

2. Set up by team

1. Set up by person

Given that class sizes typically range from 20 to 40 students, requiring teachers to assign each student to a team is impractical. I've been exploring team-based setup options. The challenge lies in displaying the entire class on the screen in a way that doesn't overwhelm the teachers.

1. On-page version

2. Modal version

We know setting up teams can be tricky and time-consuming, so I went with a modal approach. I'm also trying out wide accordions to show teams, making it easier to focus on one team at a time.

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Concepts

Question:

Do teachers always need to pre-assign all the teams?

I worked with our UX researcher to set up the interactive prototype usability tests on usertesting.com. We asked the 5 teachers about their current process of creating teams for assignments, and let them click through prototypes to compare two versions of the prototypes:

Version 1:

The teacher sees an alert when there are students NOT on teams.

Version 2:

The teacher can assign some of the students to teams, and leave the rest of the class to choose their own teams.

Result:

The majority of teachers preferred version 2

The teachers greater flexibility in the setup process. Often, they prefer to organize groups in the classroom with all students present, reducing the risk of overlooking anyone.

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Usability Tests

1. Auto - assign & shuffle:
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‍To streamline team setup, an "Auto-assign" button has been added at the bottom left, displaying student and team counts for clarity. Teachers can choose team leads, then use "Auto-assign" to complete team setup.

Once teams are formed, the button becomes "Shuffle," enabling teachers to randomly rearrange team assignments.

2. Partially assign:

Support partial team setup with a confirmation before assignment published. This allows teachers to let students pick teams while controlling the team leaders, helping to prevent mistakes.

3. Sort and search:
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Teachers value the ability to search for and sort by student names. To facilitate this, I've added labels displaying each student's current team and a quick "Add" button in the dropdown menu.

4. Modify teams:
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After publishing an assignment, teachers have the flexibility to adjust teams. They can reassign students to different teams through the team management tab.

4. Student’s view:
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Students will be able to view their assigned team and team members before starting the assignment. Additionally, within the assignment editor, they'll see the team members along with each member's online or offline status.

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Details

Compared to 2022, the conversion rate of the teacher successfully creating an assignment improved from 8% to 14%;
The conversion rate of the teacher assigning a team assignment increased from 3.5% to 9%.

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Outcomes

This project showed us how crucial user feedback is. It helped us figure out the best time to introduce the team assignment feature and if we should let teams be partially assigned. Turns out, what users really do and need can be pretty different from what we first thought. Our main aim is to make tasks easier, but it became clear that users often need the flexibilities to tweak things to fit real-life situations. While it's key to design for the ideal scenario, we also learned to pay attention to the not-so-typical situations.

Assign Teams

Help teachers assign and manage teams for online collaborative assignments