Lecture Hall Redesign

Date Mar 2018 - Jun 2018

Roles Interviews, Field Research, Prototype, User Testing

Tools Paper, chairs, desks

Team Eunice Kim, Jeewon Nam, Melissa Hui, Miriam Wagner, Tiffany Trinh

Cognitive Design Studio with Professor Scott was different from most classes in that there was no limits in what problem we could look to solve, as long as the solution stayed away from apps and websites. We decided to take on a topic that hit close to home: lectures.

Research

We decided to do some field research to start off. There were many lecture halls we hadn't been in and we decided to sit in on classes to see what effects different features could have.

Many of the older lecture halls such as Warren, Ledden, and York lecture halls would become very cramped depending on the type of lecture. Newer ones such as Galbraith, Pepper Canyon, and Rady seemed to prioritize comfort by giving each seat plenty of space in between.

We identified our stakeholders to be primarily students, and lecturers second. While not all professors are here to teach, plenty are interested in finding new ways to reach their students.

During my interview with Professor Hau Nguyen, I found out that most lectures involve teachers "dumping course material onto them". The professor was highly critical of auditorium-style lecture halls and claimed the raised platforms create distance between students and teachers.

Professor Nguyen also emphasized his belief in keeping students engaged by interacting with them every class. He cited his use of iClickers and other interactive teaching tools to be more effective than traditional methods.

Using the information we gathered, we created personas to help find a solution.

In order to visualize our findings, we began a wall wallk. We started with the problems we found in our research, then we started grouping them together under broader categories to identify the problem.

We identified the problems to largely be spatial and technical. While Professor Nyugen mentioned engaging directly with students, we felt that would be too curriculum dependent, a decision left up to the lecturers. We decided to focus on what we could fix, which was spatial and technical.

We all seemed to be in agreement that being too close in proximity with the next student was distracting. Students are often doing non-class-related things on their own laptops, and far too easy to watch what others are doing.

Moving chairs was a common theme in our sketches, which would allow plenty of space in between students and also to get them facing around and interacting with their classmates, rather than staring in one direction like in a movie theater.

If students are now free to face different directions, then they were gonna need screens with information all around them. We decided that there should be televisions/screens on multiple walls.

Prototyping

We certainly couldn't prototype an entire building, so we created a paper prototype to help bring our vision to life. We used a box to serve as the room, and cut out chairs, stairs, desks, and screens. We created a couple different layouts to test when we would move on to the user testing phase.

We first tried to create flat platforms with stairs in between, compromising the feedback we received from Professor Nyugen and the fact that some students may struggle to see in a completely flat room.

The next variation involved a flat ground but a sloping ground where the chairs still allowed a range of motion, but were fixed into the ground.

User Testing

In order to conduct user tests, we decided to take an empty room with moving chairs and rearrange them to get the lay out as close to our prototype as possible. We also placed sticky notes to denote extra television screens and outlets.

We invited students in and proceeded with a mock lecture and discussion session to see how students would respond. Afterwards, we would get their thoughts on how it went, and if there were questions, we would explain with our paper prototype.

We were met with mostly positive feedback in our approach to space things out. However some students actually felt that the moving chairs may prove more distracting than fixed chairs.

We tried slightly more uniform seating vs. collaborating grouping

Reflection

While it seems that most of our design decisions would make the desired positive impact, in the end our testing needed a lot of imagination from our users. It was hard to create the lecture ambiance in our simulations.

Realistically speaking, spacing the room out this way may not be feasible for every class. There are many classes that must fit in a couple hundred students. It logistically may not work given this fact.

But if too many students lessens information retention and learning, then it seems that the system itself may be flawed. But of course that would be a completely different problem.

We did seem to find a solution for smaller classes, not to mention that with the multiple screen set up we had, we found that changing how the information is presented can help students retain information.

Lecture Hall Redesign

Date Mar 2018 - Jun 2018

Roles Interviews, Field Research, Prototype, User Testing

Tools Paper, chairs, desks

Team Eunice Kim, Jeewon Nam, Melissa Hui, Miriam Wagner, Tiffany Trinh

Cognitive Design Studio with Professor Scott was different from most classes in that there was no limits in what problem we could look to solve, as long as the solution stayed away from apps and websites. We decided to take on a topic that hit close to home: lectures.

​

Research

We decided to do some field research to start off. There were many lecture halls we hadn't been in and we decided to sit in on classes to see what effects different features could have.

​

Many of the older lecture halls such as Warren, Ledden, and York lecture halls would become very cramped depending on the type of lecture. Newer ones such as Galbraith, Pepper Canyon, and Rady seemed to prioritize comfort by giving each seat plenty of space in between.

We identified our stakeholders to be primarily students, and lecturers second. While not all professors are here to teach, plenty are interested in finding new ways to reach their students.

​

During my interview with Professor Hau Nguyen, I found out that most lectures involve teachers "dumping course material onto them". The professor was highly critical of auditorium-style lecture halls and claimed the raised platforms create distance between students and teachers.

​

Professor Nguyen also emphasized his belief in keeping students engaged by interacting with them every class. He cited his use of iClickers and other interactive teaching tools to be more effective than traditional methods.

​

Using the information we gathered, we created personas to help find a solution.

In order to visualize our findings, we began a wall wallk. We started with the problems we found in our research, then we started grouping them together under broader categories to identify the problem.

​

We identified the problems to largely be spatial and technical. While Professor Nyugen mentioned engaging directly with students, we felt that would be too curriculum dependent, a decision left up to the lecturers. We decided to focus on what we could fix, which was spatial and technical.

We all seemed to be in agreement that being too close in proximity with the next student was distracting. Students are often doing non-class-related things on their own laptops, and far too easy to watch what others are doing.

​

Moving chairs was a common theme in our sketches, which would allow plenty of space in between students and also to get them facing around and interacting with their classmates, rather than staring in one direction like in a movie theater.

​

If students are now free to face different directions, then they were gonna need screens with information all around them. We decided that there should be televisions/screens on multiple walls.

Prototyping

We certainly couldn't prototype an entire building, so we created a paper prototype to help bring our vision to life. We used a box to serve as the room, and cut out chairs, stairs, desks, and screens. We created a couple different layouts to test when we would move on to the user testing phase.

We first tried to create flat platforms with stairs in between, compromising the feedback we received from Professor Nyugen and the fact that some students may struggle to see in a completely flat room.

​

The next variation involved a flat ground but a sloping ground where the chairs still allowed a range of motion, but were fixed into the ground.

​

User Testing

In order to conduct user tests, we decided to take an empty room with moving chairs and rearrange them to get the lay out as close to our prototype as possible. We also placed sticky notes to denote extra television screens and outlets.

​

We invited students in and proceeded with a mock lecture and discussion session to see how students would respond. Afterwards, we would get their thoughts on how it went, and if there were questions, we would explain with our paper prototype.

​

We were met with mostly positive feedback in our approach to space things out. However some students actually felt that the moving chairs may prove more distracting than fixed chairs.

Reflection

While it seems that most of our design decisions would make the desired positive impact, in the end our testing needed a lot of imagination from our users. It was hard to create the lecture ambiance in our simulations.

​

Realistically speaking, spacing the room out this way may not be feasible for every class. There are many classes that must fit in a couple hundred students. It logistically may not work given this fact.

​

But if too many students lessens information retention and learning, then it seems that the system itself may be flawed. But of course that would be a completely different problem.

​

We did seem to find a solution for smaller classes, not to mention that with the multiple screen set up we had, we found that changing how the information is presented can help students retain information.