Research Assistant @ UMBC
ROLE
UX Researcher
TEAM
2 UXR's
2 Principle Investigators
1 Data Analyst
TIMELINE
Jan 2023 - May 2025
SKILLS
UX Research
Data Analysis
Literature Review
User Interviews
Survey Design
Design Workshops
Academic UX Writing
TOOLS
Dovetail
LaTeX
Figma
Qualtrics
Otter.ai
Google Sheets
Zotero
WHAT IS PEER-CONNECT?
In the US, 50% STEM undergraduates begin their academic careers at community colleges. Transferring to four-year institutions is challenging. Evidence suggests that mentoring can help by increasing a sense of belonging and retention. PeerConnect aims to foster transfer students’ academic and social engagement, increase self-efficacy and belonging, and develop students’ self-regulated learning skills.
IMPACT
BACKGROUND
The story of PeerConnect starts when the Check My Activity tool was introduced at UMBC in 2010. This tool allowed students to view their grades, academic activities, and course rankings. From the beginning, it also gathered opt-in anonymous student survey data in the background.
A 2017 study by my PI found that students who used the CMA tool were more likely to earn above a C.
But only 32% students engaged with it.
DATA COLLECTION
There were about 500 opt-in survey responses that were not monitored since 12 years.
Q.
What were the user needs and pain points?
1.
“It looks like a grade of me vs the rest of the class and averages. Confusing and relatively useless.”
2.
“I see no benefit for myself as a student to track my "hits" especially when the disclaimer says there is no correlation to my grade.”
3.
“I have no idea what this tool does and I suspect it's not even accurate.”
THEMATIC ANALYSIS
After conducting thematic analysis over six weeks, I was able to identify key patterns in how students discovered and used the tool. These insights helped me define clear objectives: improving the dashboard’s discoverability, helping students track their progress and take control of their learning journey, and creating a single source of truth.
Students visited out of curiosity
through word of mouth.
DISCOVERABILITY
The ones who visited, only could
compare ranks.
TRACK PROGRESS
Information was scattered and unorganized.
SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH
INITIAL WIREFRAME CONCEPTS
Through surveys and fundamental design principles of student-facing LAD, we came up with initial wireframe concepts for our upcoming co-design workshops.
CO-DESIGN WORKSHOPS
I moderated over 7 co-design workshops with the students that brought them directly into the design process. It went so:
WORKSHOP ARTIFACTS
To deepen our qualitative analysis, we gathered different types of artifacts from the workshops. The real magic came from the co-design sketches. These were student-created dashboards showing what they wanted. They were visual expressions of mental models & their priorities. By analyzing these sketches side by side with survey responses, we were able to spot recurring themes, cluster insights, and built a solution.
HIGH FIDELITY MOCKUPS
Here is where the final designs come together, identifying what aspects are the most important for transfer students.
PeerConnect:
Allowed students to control their learning journey
Let mentors perform informed intervention
Check Deadlines
Serve as a "Single source of truth"
TESTING AND FEEDBACK
Here is where the final designs come together, identifying what aspects are the most important for transfer students.
FEEDBACK
"upcoming deadlines is easy to spot"
“this platform would help me track my progress”
“i really love this interface, it looks professional!”
“to-do list is a great addition, i don’t have to switch apps”
ACM SIGCHI 3-MINUTE PRESENTATION
This video was recorded to be played at the ACM SIGCHI 2024 Conference held in Honolulu, Hawaii, 2024.
CHECK OUT THE PUBLICATIONS!
