XIGUO®

A class management and communication APP between the class monitors and students for the context of college in China

About the project

This project explores a new product opportunity for Chinese college students regarding their communication on various class affairs. Class monitors have always been using message tools to communicate with their class members, we analyzed the problems of using these tools and came up with a new approach.

Role

It's a start-up project that I worked with another engineer as a two-people startup team at the beginning, in which I was responsible for all of the experience design, interaction design and visual design. It's excited to play the whole game of designer's role to turn a concept into a mobile product.

Are these messaging APPs a good way for
class monitor to broadcast notifications?

Monitor “I always use Fetion to send message to class members, the problem is many people don’t like to give me a response, so I have no idea if everyone get the notification or not”

Student "Sometimes my monitor use Wechat to broadcast notifications, but my Wechat messege list is always crowed with various messages, so I always miss those notifications hiden in the group chat"

Student “Sometimes I want to find an important information shortly such as the assignment format or the location of a meeting. Only in that case I would carefully read the notifications.”

Monitor “For example I count how many people will attend an activity, it's hard to conduct the statistics by looking at all of the messages. I have to scroll over the group chat and search the record. Many irrelevant chat there.”

What needed is not just messaging,
but also managing.

change the information architecture based on the social relationship and user scenarios in the problem space

create representation of information visually as the interface between the logic reality and user’s mental model

and then a new experience will be introduced through the interaction with the digital interface embodied the real-world interpersonal relationships and social interactions.

Monitor
In the message based system, different messages scatter in the list, it’s hard to organize the feedbacks from students. While in the event-based approach, the relevant massages or feedbacks are all grouped into an event, so the monitor can get an overview of the entire class.

Student
The messaging tools convey the information as sentences, and require actual reply to leave a feedback. While in event-based approach, the information of the notification is more organized as UI elements, so students can easily get the information. And they don’t need to reply, the read receipt will be automatically sent to the monitor.




"God View"
The monitor can easily find out people who have not read the notification, and remind them just by clicking their avatars. Students who open the APP and slide the notification item will be marked as "read" on the monitor end. The interaction is straightforward for both ends.

Vote & Statistics
Sometimes monitors need to count how many people choose option A, and how many people choose option B for making a collective decision. By reading through the messages or the group chat, this work could be quite awkward. The vote / statistics function could largely steamline this process.

Interface Design

The product details

The user group of XIGUO is basically young people who born after 1990. In China, we call this group post-90s generation. Comparing with the older Chinese population, this group of people concern much more about fashion and individual style, and more eager to express themselves. Taking this into UI design consideration, I think the visual style of this APP should fall in between simplicity, diversity, fun, loveliness and elegance, eventhough some of them seem like contrary to each other.

The monitor can set a reminder in the notification to automatically remind students in case some students forget the event. Google services like Calendar and Google Now is not available in China, so this feature is quite needed.

A notification always contains multiple information such as time, location and other details. By using messenger, the information is conveyed as sentences, it’s not easy to make the information more organized. In our design, we group the different information into the UI elements, so that student can get the notification by a glance.

To appeal students to use this App, we designed a feature tracking personal life and using the data recorded to facilitate an analytical perspective of life and study. Students always set a list of tasks as their daily routine, like practicing English, reading books, learning Gita etc. So this interaction design can help them on one hand to track their accomplishment of the plan, and on the other hand to help maintain the good habit of organized life and study.

Little tapping, big data. The data can be used to facilitate a comparison between the user and other students.

College life in China is full of various tasks, such as certificate examinations. User can use Xiguo APP to add different kinds of learning tasks in the dashboard, they can use it as a way to track learning process. The data collected from users can be used to facilitate a school even national wide analysis, so user will know their learning progress comparing with peers.

APP in the store

Version 1.2.0

Design Process

User Research
Mind Mapping
Information Architecture
Ideation Sketch
Wireframing
Prototype Development
Usability Test

The project started at January 2014, and I left the team in the August and came to USA.
The product itself has many problems, and marketing was extremely difficult due to the problems.
Good design should not just focus on interaction, but also product level and business level.