Contextual Inquiry & Interactive Prototype

Client: Cultivate

Overview

• Cultivate is a web-based platform that serves as a learning community and practice-building marketplace for K-12 educators.

• Educators tend to be a group of “life-long learners” and often find themselves seeking out new information online.

Problem

• Educators need a platform that will allow them to bookmark educational content, ask questions to a community, and monetize the resources they are creating.

• Cultivate is planning to launch its website in the fall of 2021. The current website is an early-stage prototype with limited functionality.

Role

• Performed a cognitive walkthrough study of the platform to identify potential issues that would arise when testing the site with users.

• Active team member in preparing for the contextual inquiry interview including writing the script and technical support

• Developed an affinity diagram to identify common themes with the current technology that teachers leverage for PD.

• Created an interactive prototype tour with InVision to test out proposed features.

Cognitive Walkthrough

• The study of the Cultivate platform revealed a low visibility rating of key buttons and features.

• The lack of consistency presented a hard-to-follow interface. 

• By conducting this study the team was able to provide a recommendation plan for how the site could be improved.

Contextual Inquiry

A remote contextual inquiry was conducted with an expert occupational therapist. Their depth of knowledge was crucial for understanding how a tool like Cultivate would integrate into a professional development workflow.

• Teachers collect resources across multiple platforms and this can feel cumbersome.

• The study revealed that a common practice for teachers with questions will turn to sites like Twitter or Reddit.

• By asking questions on an open platform, a user will find an abundance of activity and resources.

• The site requires a stronger organizational system, integration with other social media apps, and a more visually focused way to explore.

• Cultivate as an early-stage platform did not provide the test subjects with enough information to explain the concept.

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

• Quick hand-drawn sketches to start getting ideas onto paper.

• Thinking about a new teacher signing up for Cultivate and what that experience will look like.

• This is a great exercise to bring to life initial ideas before bringing things into Sketch.

User Stories

• As a new teacher, I want to absorb new teacher content in order to gain more inclusive teaching practice. 

• As a Lead Cultivator I want to bring my network together in order to help educators build a stronger community of inclusive learners.

Digital Prototype

• The site is in need of a stronger organizational system, integration with other social media apps, and a more visually focused way to explore.

• When conducting a contextual inquiry it was noted that the color scheme of the application is inviting for sharing information

• Users in the study found the site to have potential as a catch-all system for helping educators with their professional development (PD).

• The main area of emphasis was helping explain, to a new user, the value this new platform would create for teachers seeking professional development.

• Currently, educators use existing social media platforms to ask questions.

• Additionally, easing a new user into the community pool was important when onboarding to the platform.

• By asking the new users for their interests upon sign-up, the website will begin categorizing content into their feed.