Radius

Fostering Academic Integrity

An assignment submission tool which helps students manage and submit course projects. Academic integrity is encouraged by adding transparency to students and their work. Allowing classmates to see your work not only provides motivation, but a social incentive to be honest.

This was a team project awarded 2nd place for Adobe's GTA Creative Jam.

Project Brief

Design an app that encourages, empowers and fosters a community of academic integrity.

Timeline

November 2019 (4 hours)

Team

Wayne Cen
Rafael Flora
‍Thano Sipsis
‍Tibi Leonov
‍Yasmin Mukino

Understanding the Problem

We started by trying to understand why people cheat by sharing our own experiences, as well as looking into other student's experiences with cheating. With some preliminary research, we found that:

Competitive Advantage

Students feel like they need to cheat to be the smartest person in the class and gain an advantage over their peers.

Peer Pressure from Others

Students cheat to impress others or seem 'cooler', as well, some feel pressure to be smarter from adults.

Heavy Consequences

When failing a class, students are more likely to cheat so they won't have to retake the class (delaying graduation).

Our Design Solution

A platform for students to submit and share their projects. Students are given the option to pair up with others for peer review. For this, we looked at our own experiences with sharing assignments. When held accountable by peers, students felt less inclined to be academically dishonest and more motivated to share better work.

User Flow Planning

Together, we briefly planned out a user flow and included features/design considerations informed by the user journey questions.

Wireframing and Rapid Prototyping

Due to tight time constraints, we quickly divvied up responsibilities. Each one of us roughly wireframed and designed a part of the process. I was responsible for designing the submission gallery, prototyping the app, and making sure our user interface followed the design system Thano provided.

"This will be a great, easy sell to the professors. Professors are now going to have the students do peer reviews and check their work — that in itself is a great notion. I also like the notions around connecting individuals within the class, teeing off the implicit values of academic integrity. Really like the fit and finish, there was a lot of attention towards the layout of the elements and the way it would flow through felt very consistent."

Dan Harrelson
Vice President of UX Design @ Informatica

"One of my highlights of your presentation was the time you spent empathizing with students at the beginning. It stood out as you spending a great deal of time thinking about how students actually feel and how it'll influence the experience. I think that actually shone through the most in the peer review system. Great work!

Archie Bagnell
Senior Experience Designer @ Adobe

"I think the visual language communicated here is very strong. In terms of developing trust with someone, I'm curious to see how that would integrate into other well-established social networks and how it would translate into a space like this one. This is very solid, professional work. Well done."

Paul Mendoza
Designer & Copywriter @ UCLA

Reflection & Takeaway

Having four hours to design a prototype seemed like an impossible task, but we pulled through due to everyone's unique design background. Our discussions helped me grasp a greater understanding on how to make meaningful choices for the user.

Spend time nailing down the design thinking — one of the things I embraced while working with this team was the amount of time we spent really trying to understand the problem space. In total, we spent a bit more than two hours conducting research, a user journey workshop, exchanging ideas and sharing our understanding of the user experience. The foundation of our solution had to be solid before we hopped on our laptops.