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Team Firebolt Signing off!!!!

“Happiness can only be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”  - Professor Albus Dumbledore

But we gotta sleep :D  Also, thanks for bearing up with our harry potter madness. :)  NOX!

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Phase 4: Deliver (please click on the images to view in full mode)

We designed high-fidelity screens for our developed concept and wireframes, and validated the features by connecting back to the gaps identified in the process. 

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STORYBOARDING CONCEPT: USING KNOW YOUR PEER TO ENCOURAGE LEARNING AND FORMING ORGANIC CONNECTIONS

In order to address these concerns, we created KYP-Know Your Peers, a digital platform in form of an app that enables and encourages peer to peer learning through meeting new peers & stay connected with old ones; also sharing learning and knowledge among each other.

This kind of learning enables development of interpersonal and communication skills. This would help them participate in more social discussion tackling the stress of deadlines, exams, assignments, finding resources in the new pedagogy. And the best part is they are not alone in the process, they work with each other and save each other from burnouts and mental fatigue to ensure the boat doesn’t drown. While sharing the learning and growing experience, they also build organic connections with each other.

 Create low-fi wireframes

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Perks of participating in a 24 hours designathon, you get to experience the cool breeze and sunrise! (while looking like a zombie)  PS: we started as wizards. 

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Phase 3:Develop and sketch

After defining the challenge statement focus and goals, 

We created 4 HMW’s to guide our ideation direction:

1. How might we encourage team work and mentoring?

2. How might we make peers feel comfortable in approaching other peers ?

3. How might we inform them the value of peer to peer learning?

4. How might we modify peer to peer learning online?

This helped us generate multiple ideas and build challenge focused concepts together.

Ideas to concept 

After some tinkering and research, we though it is best to create this environment like a social media platform as students are very active here and would find this environment easy to adapt. Any physical space ideation we had seemed dangerous to try under the current circumstances.

We brainstormed on some possibilities of what points help us deliver a safe, easy and collaborative environment. Narrowing down to identifying major challenges we wanted to solve in the context, we selected need to make strong connections and new connections - this would help people develop interpersonal skills and that would give them confidence to communicate, in turn developing social connections & networks.Encourage students to share knowledge with each other. Create study groups to tackle pressures of assignments, deadlines and exams supporting each other.Create a safe environment.

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Story boarding the design challenge. 

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NARROWING DOWN TO THE PROBLEM STATEMENT: Online learning platforms have managed to provide education and collaboration to the college students, but peer to peer learning is still limited in online mode and have affected student's holistic growth and performance in academics and personal space.  Regular interactions with peers might keep them motivated to learn and also have relevant social interactions to avoid feelings of loneliness or isolation. 

DEFINING THE DESIGN CHALLENGE:

We realized they need a space to  feel comfortable, discuss, study and share knowledge and emotions. Hence we came up with the following design statement :

To create an environment where college peers feel more comfortable in meeting new peers and also share learning & knowledge resources with each other.

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MINI CHALLENGE 3 : MEME

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BREAK TIME!!! Enjoying “break” virtually :) 

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PHASE 2: Define 

Upon brainstorming, we realized the difficulty to adapt to learning is affecting learning. We thought what if everybody is going through same thing, would staying connected with peers decrease stress levels? We went on to understand Social Connectedness next: Human beings are inherently social creatures. Early humans have traveled, hunted, and thrived in social groups; humans who were separated from their tribe often suffered severe consequences. Social groups provide us with an important part of our identity, and more than that, they teach us a set of skills that help us to live our lives.Feeling socially connected, especially in an increasingly isolated world within pandemic, is more important than ever as it is resulting in student burnouts. Social interaction plays an important role in learning. Interacting with other people has proven to be quite effective in assisting the learner to organize their thoughts, reflect on their understanding, and find gaps in their reasoning. Underneath the broad umbrella of social interactions and learning, variants can range from peer learning, reciprocal teaching, learning by teaching, learning by observation, learning by doing, and self–other monitoring. We started by understanding impact of learning through social connection in different user groups and areas of life. We started by understanding impact of learning through social connection in different user groups and areas of life and explored on these: (refer to the picture above)

1. Role of social connection in students life. 2. Understanding the factors and interactions involved - interactions with people, technology role, interactions with object and data. 3. Outcomes of these interactions - physically, mentally, emotionally and on environment. 4. Does this part of Miro board look like Tetris game when you blur your eyes? :-0 (Mind Blown!!! May be we need coffee break now?!)

The above exercise helped us identify the user group as graduate and undergraduate students. A mental health study done on over 8,000 individuals in Delhi found that college students were the most affected by the pandemic and the lockdown. Students registered 41 per cent increase in emotions of anxiety/fear/worry, 54 per cent increase in anger/irritability/frustration, 27 per cent in hopelessness, sense of sadness was increased by 17 per cent, and 38 per cent increase in the feeling of loneliness/boredom.

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PHASE 1: Understanding the brief and the challenge space

We began by understanding the brief in detail and key points to keep in mind while going forward with the challenge.

This is where we try to answer questions like: How to define learning? Who is being affected? What contributes to learning? Which aspect of learning should we focus on? Interactions around learning? 

EXPLORING THE CONTEXT

Learning is defined as the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The pandemic had brought in major cultural change in learning. The medium, processes and environment of learning has changed.

We tried looking at problems for learning during the pandemic and derived these insights:

Online learning can be a privilege - depends heavily on affordability and accessibility.

It is flexible in timing and can be too flexible to schedule at times.

It brought in a change of pedagogy which is hard to adapt quickly.

Co-learning atmosphere difficult.

It is resulting in more screen time.

High burnouts due to increasing stress levels due to loss of peer learning, change in environment, habits and routines, scheduling.

Need to stay self motivated.

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Our Design Framework ^^

If you are a Potterhead like three of us...This is our Marauders Map ;-P

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Alohomora!!!

So far so good!!!!

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Mini Challenge-1 Meet the team

We are three design wizards from Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, India, excited to take part in this designathon by #Valuelabs.

We can't wait to start on this!!!

Before we go ahead, here's a little introduction of the team:

Wizard 1: Mrunali Ogriwala

Pursuing masters in Design Led Innovation, she loves to experiment with new things and increase her skill set. She is the reasonable and sensible one, (white hat of the group) and keeps the group together on track.

Wizard 2: Sanjana Kothapalli

Same as Mrunali, she's also pursuing masters in Design Led Innovation. She is super witty and a risk taker. She dives into research pretty well and knows how to connect the two dots with facts and data. Also, a potterhead.

Wizard 3: Sakshi Meena

Pursuing masters in Human Centered Design, She tries to make sense of everything from bottom to the top. The bold one and, is not scared to put her imagination into tangible form. #ValueLabs