I created a media literacy web application this past fall semester at Teachers College, Columbia University. The graduate course, ORLD 5050 – Mobile Learning Design for Professional Growth, challenges students to develop a prototype of a mobile learning activity and rapidly conduct user-testing through out the semester. By the end of the semester, I learned many valuable take-aways from this mobile learning design challenge:
- Define your audience, goals, objectives, hypothesis, and threats/pitfalls
- Develop a low-fidelity prototype (like using paper) to assist with rapid user-testing and iterations to validate your ideas from #1
- Develop qualitative and quantitative research methods like online surveys and structured interviews
- Be empathetic, listen to users, and make changes
- Feedback from users helps inform various iterations of a product
The most important lesson I learned is that designing a digital product is a process. From paper prototyping to low-fidelity digital designs, I iterated on various learning activities and went through many design updates. How? I used qualitative and quantitative research methods to gather user data. This user-data fueled the dramatic changes and updates of my mobile learning product. Check out my mobile learning activity ‘Fake Me Out’ below! Review the slide deck which includes a video walk-through of the web app. To learn more about my user-testing process, read User-Testing Process: Fake Me Out.
