ROLE

I guided interview and research efforts, designed the brand identity and user flows, and prototyped the app.

CONTEXT

Built in public over the course of a one-week designathon, Interhackt: Making & Understanding Together, winning 1st Runner Up by peer voting. (December 2020)

CODESIGNED WITH

Bianca Aguilar

Conceptualizing a mobile app for networked, project-based learning.

Scenius is a personal growth app that helps users design their own learning plans, complete with a project to cement their understanding and share their knowledge with the world.

VIEW THE PROTOTYPE →

In a world full of unfinished courses and tiring Zoom classes, is there a way to encourage learning and sharing online?

In 2020, students worldwide witnessed the shift from face-to-face classes to distance learning. As video calls replaced physical classrooms and enrollments in massive open online courses (MOOCs) on Coursera and Udemy skyrocketed, Bianca and I pondered the barriers to making and understanding together in an online setting.

Alongside 30+ teams, we set out to explore interface design with a focus on learning in public—that is, building a base of knowledge that any fellow learner can access for a documentation of what one built or learned and the problems they solved.

We walked into the first night of the hackathon armed with inspiration from two blog posts:

• Julian Lehr's Proof of X, which poses the argument that, at their core, all social networks serve to amplify "proof-of-something". Instagram contains mechanisms for proof of creative work, wealth, or social status, while fitness app Strava amplifies proof of physical activity.
• Dan Romero's Strava for Cooking, in which he proposes the concept of a Strava-like app for other niche fields like culinary arts. He suggests that a combination of single- and multiplayer features could reinforce the behavior of improving one's cooking skills.

These two sources raised the question: Could we build a "Strava for learning" app that would incentivize learning in public using proof-of-work mechanisms?

Understanding the Problem

First, we needed to see where existing learning platforms fell short. We jumped right into market and user research, exploring features from social networking sites and the educational tech (EdTech) scene alike. The tools we examined ranged from resource libraries like Khan Academy, to gamified learning platforms like Duolingo, to networked task logs like Makerlog and WIP.

A handful of products we drew ideas from and built upon.

We sent out a short user survey to our close networks, targeting self-learners who used these or similar EdTech products to pick up new skills.

Our aim was to understand their motivations for developing skills outside traditional school curricula, ****how their current tactics support (or add friction towards) their goals, and how they measure their growth.

From the responses we obtained, we spotted three salient factors that influenced the effectiveness of online, self-directed learning.

LEARNING FOR WHAT?

1. Professional growth
2. Pure passion or interest
3. Prerequisites for school

FACTORS AFFECTING LEARNING

• Community: Is there a place to discuss what I've learned and get feedback? Am I being held accountable by teachers and fellow learners? 💬
• Structure: Is there a step-by-step outline I should follow? How much flexibility do I have to select only what interests me or explore outside the instructional material? 📚
• Application: Am I presented with opportunities to apply my insights and make them stick? 🧠

Four from the twelve survey participants were then interviewed to get a more nuisanced view of individual preferences and motivators in self-learners' workflows. We unraveled some key themes after clustering responses into an affinity map.

KEY INSIGHTS

1. Making and understanding together is hampered in commonly-used learning platforms like MOOCs because of the absence of learning feedback and spaces to put knowledge into practice. Learners struggle to close this theory-practice gap due to passive teaching approaches and unutilized/highly impersonal avenues for peer interaction.
2. The vastness of online learning materials is a double-edged sword: while many resources are free, learners tend to experience information overload, leading to analysis paralysis. (As one student remarked, "How do you know which [resources] are worth your time/actually beneficial for you?") To counter this, some of our respondents go as far as to build their own rough learning plans to develop a personalized sense of structure.