👩💻Design Clinic
The Scientific Writing Module is a module on Canvas, designed to guide chemistry students at the University of Michigan in writing scientific papers. This module was developed by Dr. Yulia Sevryugina, Jill Harland, and our team at UMSI.
My Role:
Project Manager
UX Designer
Client:
UM Library
Team:
3 members
Tools:
Figma
Miro
Canvas
Digital learning objects (DLOs) have been demonstrated to provide effective and interactive training to students. Provided an access to standard web browser, they are accessible and free of cost to support students' learning. During the pandemic, DLOs have proven to be all the more necessary, to improve students’ information literacy skills in the process of writing academic papers(locating reliable scholarly sources, critical analysis, and clear communication of results).
On Canvas, a learning management system, a DLO called the Scientific Writing Module has been developed. The module aims to guide students through the process of writing scientific writing process. Our team was tasked with improving this module so that it could be as effective as possible for students to put it to use.
The team presented the final results of this project at the UMSI 2021 Spring Virtual Student Project Exposition. You can click to view the deliverables below:
Additionally, a paper on this project will be presented at the Great Lakes Regional Meeting (GLRM) American Chemical Society Regional Conference (Elevating the Importance of Diversity and Inclusion in Chemistry) in June 2021.
We followed the Double Diamond framework shown below as we researched, designed, and iterated.
Prior to starting user research, our team did a thorough heuristic analysis of the existing Canvas module. As students who are familiar with using Canvas modules for instruction, our insight was similar to that of the target user.
This first included creating infographics for the module, to reduce the amount of text, before it could be first released to interview/user testing participants:
We then mocked up some of the initial design suggestions from our evaluation in Figma. In the pages below, suggestions included restructuring of information, rewording of content, and adding infographics:
Our team began the user research process by recruiting 5 students studying chemistry, biology, or related fields at the University of Michigan to interview. The interview consisted of three parts:
After completing the interviews through Zoom, we transcribed them using otter.ai, and hi-lighted notable quotes that demonstrated significant need for improvement on the Canvas module. We then transferred these quotes into an affinity analysis in Miro, from which we derived higher level themes, and even-higher level key findings.
From the interviews, I also put together a user journey map, which visually maps out the average user's high and low points while interacting with the module:
The team came up with four overarching key findings, and from there, five overall UX recommendations for the site.
Users find it helpful to follow along a with paper example while going though the writing process.
The order of the module pages was not always intuitive or easily understood by users.
Students found it difficult to recall all sections at once when attempting the quiz.
External resources in the module will help students find further assistance in writing papers.
01. Use one example throughout the module to clarify how sections fit together.
Many users expressed the desire to have a sample paper to "follow along" with while writing their own. One participant mentioned "I do think it would be helpful to have a topic that you were writing about alongside it because then i think people would kind of rely on following the steps a lot more and so just like oh we're gonna write this so then you have these extra modules alongside.”
02. The order of the pages should reflect how students write scientific papers.
In order to have users follow along with their mental models of how a scientific paper is written, we found that it is much more intuitive for the order of pages in the model to reflect the way a paper is typically written. Our suggested order groups the pages into preliminary actions, style of writing, chronological steps of writing the paper, and closing resources.
03. Split up the page into subsections, so that users can more easily access information they need with minimal time spent searching.
Because of the numerous pages, students found it cumbersome to search through the module to find information that they needed. Many of our participants had experience in writing scientific papers, but felt that they could use the module to refer back to for certain parts they may need help on. Using visual hierarchy by making some of the pages into subsections of others can help users of varying skill identify what they need help on, and where to easily access it.
04. Add summaries on module pages related to the quiz to ensure users know key information to takeaway as they work through the module.
The module includes a quiz at the end, to test students' knowledge, and how effectively they picked up information throughout the module. Because of the numerous pages and abundance of information, students found it difficult to recall and retain the information they were being quizzed on. We suggest to hi-light important takeaways for each subsection, to aid students recognition when taking the quiz.
05. Provide resources to students organized by type of resource and relevance to writing stage, e.g. writing center, mentoring, etc.
The University of Michigan (which all participants attended), offers several resources including mentoring in science subjects, writing, etc. Rather than providing links to websites, which the original version of the site had, we suggest including more guided resources such as these, and to add them throughout the module at the steps that they would be most helpful on.
Reaching out for mentorship as a PM👥
The School of Information (UMSI) provided mentors to us throughout the process of this project. As students, it was really helpful for us to be able to reach out to professionals with questions about working with clients, and to also get general approval before our client meetings. Additionally, UMSI Design Clinic held weekly Project Manager meetings. This was my first experience as a PM, so it was extremely helpful to both give and receive advice from my peers and the program leaders. These PM and mentor meetings resolved a lot of the roadblocks our team faced.
Articulating why we take the steps we do in the design process💬
While working on this project, I realized the importance of communication. This project involved working with interdisciplinary teams, so it became important to articulate steps of our design process to groups outside of our department. For example, when writing our interview protocol, I found it helpful for both the client and the team to write a small blurb about the purpose of each group of questions, and what we hope to gain out of it. This cleared up any gaps in understanding about the purpose of user input.
