During our research, one university student said that she used to study in a library but due to the pandemic, she now needs to study at home. Now, she has to study in her room — making it difficult for her to keep focused. This conversation with her inspired us to tackle a novel problem caused by the pandemic. Through collaboration with another UX/UI designer, we set out to solve this problem. I mainly contributed to user research, ideation, creating low and high fidelity prototypes, and performing usability tests. This article focuses on the UX design process.

Team Members:

Researcher & UX/UI Designer: Saki Kurano (me!),

UX/UI Designer & Art Director: Kanako Takashima (Kanako’s portfolio)

Duration:

Research: 2 weeks,

Ideation & low-fidelity prototyping: 1 month,

High-fidelity prototyping: 1 month

Target Audience:

University students

Design Tools:

Figma & Framer

User Research

Why Do Students Study?

We first set out to understand the students’ motivations. Some key questions we kept in mind were:

• Why do students study so hard?
• What do students want to obtain through their studies?
• What is studying for students?

Through our research (Zoom interviews, reading threads, and watching study-related youtube videos), we tried to figure out the answers to those questions.

We obtained these key findings:

• Students want to efficiently finish their assignments to graduate and obtain their degrees.
• Students want to get good grades and be proud of the work they do.

In short: To students, studying can be thought as a measurement of their success.

What Interrupts Their Studies?

While we now understood their core motivation for studying, we still needed to dig deeper and ask ourselves why some students were having a hard time staying focused. Much like our first approach, the key questions we now kept in mind were:

• What keeps students away from studying?
• What keeps students motivated to continue studying?
• When do students feel that they need to begin studying?

While there are a lot of distractions in our world, we found that many of our participants said that their smartphones were their largest distraction. The endless amounts of apps (Ex. Instagram, mobile games) on their phones kept them from being productive.

Furthermore, we found that their initial motivation to study was not enough to keep them focused. A few quotes from our interviews further elucidated this finding:

“I ask classmates if they have started their assignment, then I know I should start it too.”

“In high school, I didn’t need to study so hard to get good grades. But in university, it was different. There were a lot of people smarter than me and I realized that I needed to study more to keep up with my peers.”

“I am motivated to keep studying through watching someone else studying.”

These quotes demonstrated to us that students can easily lose their motivation to study when they are alone. We now understand that it is important for them to know that other people are studying hard with them.

User Journey Map

Based on our research, we created a user journey map to understand our users’ feelings and actions. As you can see, the most exciting moment for our persona is the “finish studying phase”.

Competitive Analysis

We researched other focus apps (e.g. Focus To Do, BeFocused), task management apps (e.g. Todoist), and “Study with Me” videos on YouTube. We noticed that the “Study with Me” videos on YouTube are very popular among students. Some videos had over 1 million views and thousands of comments. In fact, many people put their to-dos and goals in the videos’ comment sections. From there, we assumed that it was important for them to create a clear goal(s) when they start their studies.

Research Takeaways

From our research, these features needed to be included in our service:

• Reduce distractions from smartphones
• Create a “co-study” atmosphere
• Input their goal(s) when they start their studies

Ideation

Thus, we came up with the service called “Studius!”. Studius! is a web service that blocks their smartphone through the *Pomodoro technique. It also encourages our users to keep studying through “Study with Me” videos.

*The Pomodoro technique is a time management method that uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short 5-minute breaks.

User Flow

On the home page, users can set their goal and then start a study session. The study and break sessions will loop until they finish their studies. During the study sessions, their smartphone apps will be blocked if they pair their devices.

Usability Tests and Prototype Iterations

We conducted usability tests with our low fidelity prototype. The key feedback from our participants and mentors were:

• The app screen during the onboarding process looks like an ad. Everyone tried to skip the section without reading it.
• The study sessions don’t look personal. They didn’t feel like they were studying with an actual human.
• Instructions were not clear when they faced the service for the first time.
• It needs more exciting features to keep the users motivated when they use Studius! beside the basic functions.

The Final Prototypes & Demo

Based on the feedback, we decided to add the following to our app:

• A landing page to explain the features and an instruction interaction after you sign up & set up.
• Other users’ working status on top of the “Study with Me” video during a study session.
• A gamification feature where users can collect badges and track their achievements to keep them motivated.

Postscript

While the project was very challenging, especially in striking a balance between creating excitement and reducing distractions for users, I truly enjoyed working on this project. I learned that user research and usability tests were very important in fixing our direction and growing our product. I would like to thank all the participants from our research & usability tests, the instructors & mentors at Vancouver Film School, and my team member Kanako (who contributed to research & high fidelity prototyping with me along with her amazing art direction & illustrations!) for their support.