Middle School Math

2007
HCI methods, affinity diagramming, contextual inquiry, contextual design, heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, keystroke level modeling, think-aloud usability studies, education

I worked on a semester group project to explore the feasibility of web-based tools for middle school math tutoring, particularly in after-school tutoring context. Having had classroom exposure to the HCI methods listed above, we immediately applied them in a practical setting to explore the problem domain, previous work and similar solutions.

We visited actual tutoring sessions in middle schools and volunteer organizations to gain an understanding of real-life work processes. We also performed usability evaluations of existing similar systems. Based on our findings, we created a prototype of a web-based tutoring system and evaluated its usability using the various analytic and empirical methods in our toolkit.