Moving into week 10, we had a phone call with clients in Wheeling Country Day School. They were really happy by what we made. They also gave us a lot of suggestions in our designing and development. We iterated our application based on their suggestions.
When it came to Elkonin box, they were happy with the consistency of physical Elkonin Box. But, in their daily learning, they are quite strict with the letter format. We need to change into lower cases for a better usage. For students with dyslexia, teachers wish to put marbles more in order and groups get more separated. We found the real phoneme learning is not restricted in consonant, vowel, digraph and word family. We asked for the materials they are using in their actual learning process, which helped us a lot in the following iterations. In addition, client wished us to give more emphasis on the the phoneme when they are learning, so we are going to finish the highlight of each phoneme, especially when they are doing the word chaining exercise.
In terms of the game on the Promethean Board, we did the first play-testing in usability. We realized maybe cooperative game is not the goal for our project. Communicating with clients, we found they did not avoid competition between students and students. Actually, the competition is improving the communication and education value. We changed a little bit of the game mechanism after we finished the playtesting. After guests successfully found a word, we asked next guest to play the game rather than keep the same guest playing with the game. This helped the whole group get self-achievement.
Attached video is showing how we are doing the first usability playtesting.
Design team iterated and redesign the whole flow of the Elkonin box digitization. Followings are the paper prototype and the finalized digital design frame work.
After this week, we are going to improve our application and visit wheeling country day school. Therefore, we generated the playtesting plan.
Elkonin Box Playtest
Date: Friday, April 5th 2019
Location: Classroom at Wheeling Country Day School (West Virginia) Product
Digital Elkonin Box (Chromebook)
Type of Users: The users in this test have the qualities below:
Students with dyslexia
Age from 8 to 12 (not priority)
Familiar with the basic rules of Elkonin Box exercise
Familiar with using Chromebook laptop
Objective / Questions
The primary goals of this playtest is whether users:
(1) Are able to understand the basic interfaces
: Match the elements in physical Elkonin Exercise with those of the digital product
(2) Are able to learn feedback system easily
: Understand the rules (box to interact with, positive/negative feedback etc)
: Feel sense of achievement and interest
Test Plan Overview
Test Method and Justification: Think-aloud
Total 3 sessions, 2 participants at one session
Estimated duration
10-15 minutes per session
Promethean Playtest
Date: Friday, April 5th 2019Location: Classroom at Wheeling Country Day School (West Virginia) Product
Digital Elkonin Box (Chromebook)
Type of Users: The users in this test have the qualities below:
Students with dyslexia
Age from 8 to 12 (not priority)
Familiar with the basic rules of Elkonin Box exercise
Familiar with using Chromebook laptop
Objective / Questions
The primary goals of this playtest:
(1) Are able to understand the basic interfaces
: Match the theme with Elkonin box exercise
: How long do they need to familiar with this game
(2) How the interest curve will be
: How do they enjoy it when they first play, positive/negative feedback etc
: Feel sense of achievement and interest
: How do they enjoy it when they are familiar with playing it
(3) How teacher will value the educational ability
(4) How attractive the art style and UI will be for students with dyslexia
Test Plan Overview
Total 1 session, 4 participants at one session
experimenters in a test: 4-5
2-3 people making observation / asking questions to each participant
1 person making a video / picture record
1 person in charge of technical issues
Estimated duration : 12-15 minutes