• Client
  • Sector
  • My Contributions
  • Project Time
  • Individual Integrative Project at Columbia University
  • Education, Mobile Storytelling, Intergenerational Communication
  • User research, problem statement, user interface design and user testing
  • 3 months

Introduction

"Connect” is a digital storytelling-based sharing mobile application that enables the elderly and the youth to collaborate on creating their own multimedia stories or other artifacts which promote idea construction and creative self-expression.

Major Challenges

Goals and Objectives

Users will be provided with both offline and online communicational opportunities

Both generations will cultivate media literacy in the process of using digital storytelling tools .

Users will be provided with a effective matching system.

Provide step by step instructions to help users learn how to create digital artifacts in this app

Research Process

In the research process, I tried to identify the motivation, the need and the pain points of both elders students and the youth. I did competitive analysis and user interviews to see how other products tackle this issue and the underlying problems in other digital storytelling platforms.

Competitive Analysis

I identified that most mobile digital storytelling platforms lack detailed instructions or step-by-step collaborative tasks for intergenerational collaboration

Platforms are focused on more offline community-based collaborations or video projects displayed in physical settings such as school or museums instead of asynchronous communication

Some designs are more focused on one-way communication rather than improve mutual understanding between the two groups.

Difficulty in attending to the conflicting communication needs and preferences” of intergenerational communication

Some designs have complicated interfaces but most older users fail to achieve the tasks because their lack of digital literacy.

Qualitative User Interviews

With the above mentioned research and ideas, I conducted interviews with 3 older people and 3 younger people.

I identified that older generations who are eager to learn how to use new technologies and social media platforms to share their own stories but they always fail because of the the lack of digital literacy.
  • The elders are frustrated by complicated interface of most digital storytelling platforms.
  • Younger people don't have similar interests or skills to the elders so the elders feel frustrated when collaborating with them.
  • The elders are afraid to share their stories in digital forms because the lack of digital literacy
  • The youth are eager to know more about their communities but they don't know where to start.
  • The remote collaboration is needed.
  • Different values on social issues and technology which makes the youth feel emotional disconnect with older generations.
  • The youth are sometimes puzzled by misinformation online when they try to create stories.

Define Problem

Based on the the stakeholders interview, literature review and competitive analysis, I built up user personas and identified the problems in this section.

Meet Different Generations

Pain Points To Opportunities

Based on the user research, I mapped out the personas to identify the main user goals, pain points, and their emotional needs. The main outcome here provide potential features that could possibly solve the user's pain points.

Ideate

A collaborative digital storytelling platform with effective matching system, digital storytelling resources and collaborative tasks which help users co-create their stories.

User flow

After using post-it notes and whiteboard for information architecture building, I used very rough sketches to do user-flow test to see how each features could be better connected and finalize the user flow.

Design

Since there are two kinds of users, the overall user flow gets really complicated. However, since it is a collaborative digital storytelling platform, I would like to design a simple structure for these two types of users to encourage a more effective matching process and sustainable communication.

Wireframe- Matching

Main Features
  • Users can find their partners either by inviting their friends, QR code or go through the matching process.
  • Users need to fill in the information about their region, culture and their interests to help the matching system identify who will be the appropriate partner.
Problem Addressed
  • With matching system, users can be matched with people from distant places.
  • Participant are not well informed in traditional process because they don't have detailed information.
  • The elders can find young people who have similar interests to them and who are willing to listen to their stories.

Wireframe- Home Page

Main Features
  • Users can find resources they need for creating digital storytelling, templates, and the task progress bar for them to check if they finish the collaborative tasks.
  • Video Chat function provides communicational opportunities and social support.
  • Task progress bar aims to provide opportunities for relationship building and increment learning process. A task tracking bar can help users manage their collaborative tasks.
  • Resources function provides templates to inspire users to customize digital stories.
Problem Addressed
  • Older generations need more instructions for learning digital storytelling.
  • The tasks help both users build procedural knowledge in collaboratively creating digital artifacts.
  • Users can easily find templates and resources they need for creating stories.

Wireframe- Tasks

  • Each task is provided with clear instructions and help assistant buttons for users to provide as many scaffoldings as possible.

High-Fidelity Protoypes

Users can choose who they are when they log in for the first time to start their journey.

Match Process: Match and Explore

    • Users can choose how they would like to find partners. They can scan QR code, search friend’s user ID or find partners by using the matching system.
    • The commonalities are cultural background, interests and similar regions because of the time zone difference.

    Home Page and Tasks: Procedural Knowledge building

    • Each task is provided with clear instructions and help buttons for users to provide scaffoldings.
    • There will be five major collaborative tasks for users to complete.
    • For task 2, users learn how to do research by exploring different research tips to enhance information literacy.

    Collaborative features

    To support both groups to collaborate asynchronously, tools that enable both generations to annotate and add sticky notes are provided.

    • Annotations: Users can use sticky notes for storyboarding and add video clips on top of the ones created by others to chain the videos/images into a story.
    • In the script creation and storyboard creation process, they can choose to simply edit the notes or add sticky notes to the original notes.

    Resources

    Templates, media resources, research resources and copyright issues are provided in the resource page within one click.
    • Templates:
      ‍      Users can customize templates for their own needs.
    • Fact check center is used
      when learners feel uncertain about the information they gather. It help learners develop the ability to search for information, identify the correct source of information, analyze and evaluate the information they gather.
    • Copyright and privacy
      Users are expected to understand about copyright and privacy issues.

    Reflection

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