A. Task & Problem Identification:
1. Introduce your problem.
Describe your problem using properties, affordances, and signifiers?
The problem that we currently have is that the eLC messaging and communication system is bulky and unintuitive for its users. the layout of some of eLC's properties, such as the messaging icon and layout, suggests that it has the messaging function that is similar to that of any other common messaging service, attached to the main appication. In reality, the eLC messaging system lacks affordances such as creating group chats, viewing context of messages, a proper notification system, and more.
Why is it a problem?
This is a problem, because a lot of the time, sending messages through eLC is extremely inconvenient, and many students go to third party applications to more easiy communicate with one another. However, there's problems with this approach, as it's very difficult to reach out and include every student in the course along with the possibility that some students just do not want to download a third party application. School-oriented group chats and servers are also often prone to scam and spam bots.
How is it theme relevant?
eLC is a platform used by UGA students and professors alike, and having a well imagined messaging system on the platform rather than something that is confusing to use and leads the students off platform, can allow for the students to better connect with each other and the professor, as everything is integrated into the same platform that the students and professors are required to have in the first place. This ensures that students are not left out when creating class chats, along with the convenience of keeping everything in one place.
The problem that we currently have is that the eLC messaging and communication system is bulky and unintuitive for its users. the layout of some of eLC's properties, such as the messaging icon and layout, suggests that it has the messaging function that is similar to that of any other common messaging service, attached to the main appication. In reality, the eLC messaging system lacks affordances such as creating group chats, viewing context of messages, a proper notification system, and more.
Why is it a problem?
This is a problem, because a lot of the time, sending messages through eLC is extremely inconvenient, and many students go to third party applications to more easiy communicate with one another. However, there's problems with this approach, as it's very difficult to reach out and include every student in the course along with the possibility that some students just do not want to download a third party application. School-oriented group chats and servers are also often prone to scam and spam bots.
How is it theme relevant?
eLC is a platform used by UGA students and professors alike, and having a well imagined messaging system on the platform rather than something that is confusing to use and leads the students off platform, can allow for the students to better connect with each other and the professor, as everything is integrated into the same platform that the students and professors are required to have in the first place. This ensures that students are not left out when creating class chats, along with the convenience of keeping everything in one place.
2. Identify your potential users.
What user population is affected by your problem of study?
Our potential users are students and instructors of UGA that are using eLC for communications.
What related tasks do they perform?
The users send both message and document communication for casual and educational purposes. Users may also want to respond in a comprehensive manner and orginise important messages.
How would users benefit from a solution (not necessarily your solution) to your problem of study?
Users would benefit by increased ease of communication, produstivity and an increased ability to collaborate remotely.
Our potential users are students and instructors of UGA that are using eLC for communications.
What related tasks do they perform?
The users send both message and document communication for casual and educational purposes. Users may also want to respond in a comprehensive manner and orginise important messages.
How would users benefit from a solution (not necessarily your solution) to your problem of study?
Users would benefit by increased ease of communication, produstivity and an increased ability to collaborate remotely.
3. Seven stages of action to describe how to get to messaging system:
Goal: Send a message to someone from eLC messaging. Be able to access the messaging menu.
Execution:
• Trigger: The student or professor receives a message from another user, the student has a question about an assignment for the teacher or another student that might not require a formal email.
• Plan: The user thinks about how they want to communicate to the other student or professor. They have to consider how long the message is, what the formality of the message needs to be, and how soon they need a response.
• Specify: for a long message to the professor concerning something important like grades or attendance the user will most likely use email. For contacting other students informally as a group users might use something like GroupMe or Piazza. There is an option to message other students through eLc without having to have prior interaction with that student because of class lists on eLc as well as using outlook because there is a directory with the emails of all students made available. Communicating to other students informally in any other fashion is up to the students to make those connections.
• Perform: The students makes the appropriate choice of medium of communication and navigates to the group chat for the class or thread with the other student and types out the message. The user will proofread the message quickly before sending it.
○ Open up eLC, log in.
○ Navigate to the class you wish to communicate in.
> Clicking from home screen.
> Clicking the top right applications grid.
○ Click on Classlist.
○ Select people from the checklist.
○ Click on Instant Message.
○ Type in message in text box.
○ Click send.
Evaluation:
• Perception: The message sends and shows up in the thread. The user has to wait and hope for a response in a timely manner.
• Interpretation: Can the user get a response soon and access and understand the message clearly.
• Comparison of outcome with goal: The user will compare the process to other interactions they’ve had with other services like text messaging, in person interaction, piazza, groupme, slack, discord etc…
○ Other third-party programs allow access to IM almost immediately, at a click of a button
○ The eLC system itself may not be specifically communication between students but it’s meant for relaying information. Why would they hide it so hard?
○ Many extra clicks
○ Hidden menus, no quick way from home landing page to get to messaging system
Execution:
• Trigger: The student or professor receives a message from another user, the student has a question about an assignment for the teacher or another student that might not require a formal email.
• Plan: The user thinks about how they want to communicate to the other student or professor. They have to consider how long the message is, what the formality of the message needs to be, and how soon they need a response.
• Specify: for a long message to the professor concerning something important like grades or attendance the user will most likely use email. For contacting other students informally as a group users might use something like GroupMe or Piazza. There is an option to message other students through eLc without having to have prior interaction with that student because of class lists on eLc as well as using outlook because there is a directory with the emails of all students made available. Communicating to other students informally in any other fashion is up to the students to make those connections.
• Perform: The students makes the appropriate choice of medium of communication and navigates to the group chat for the class or thread with the other student and types out the message. The user will proofread the message quickly before sending it.
○ Open up eLC, log in.
○ Navigate to the class you wish to communicate in.
> Clicking from home screen.
> Clicking the top right applications grid.
○ Click on Classlist.
○ Select people from the checklist.
○ Click on Instant Message.
○ Type in message in text box.
○ Click send.
Evaluation:
• Perception: The message sends and shows up in the thread. The user has to wait and hope for a response in a timely manner.
• Interpretation: Can the user get a response soon and access and understand the message clearly.
• Comparison of outcome with goal: The user will compare the process to other interactions they’ve had with other services like text messaging, in person interaction, piazza, groupme, slack, discord etc…
○ Other third-party programs allow access to IM almost immediately, at a click of a button
○ The eLC system itself may not be specifically communication between students but it’s meant for relaying information. Why would they hide it so hard?
○ Many extra clicks
○ Hidden menus, no quick way from home landing page to get to messaging system
B. Analysis of Existing Solutions:
1. Describe existing solutions.
People utilize other third-party applications for a variety of reasons, each of these applications have their own strengths and weaknesses.
GroupMe: This is a chatroom application that is often used to gather students in the same classes, extracurricular organizations, and/or groups together.
When dissecting why this application was chosen, many students claimed that it’s the perfect place to host a “discourse community” – a community of members with shared interests, ideas, languages, and knowledge (Ly 114). But the biggest reason why this application is used in an educational context is because it is “perhaps the easiest and fastest way to send and receive messages” (Ly 131). This is most likely because it is easy to access through handheld phones, instead of eLC’s awkward desktop navigation to the messaging system. Students also perceive GroupMe to be a great place for varying levels of formality. Especially when the GroupMe is composed of just other classmates, the environment is typically more relaxed, casual, and easygoing. Even when students are put into GroupMe chats with instructors, their “formal” messages are still significantly more casual than messages sent through email. It is socially acceptable to respond as sooner or later as other users want. The application strengthens the users’ “ several forms of rhetorical thinking when they compose messages” depending on who is in the GroupMe (Ly 132).
However, with the application being detached from first-party applications, students often had difficulty inviting people to the chat without another channel of communication. This risks GroupMe having echo chambers or not a diverse amount of people. Users also felt pressured to conform to a certain guideline of correct grammar, with the risk of being perceived negatively by other classmates. Students also had difficulty saving important information and repetitiveness was often seen in this application, hinting at the inability to highlight important information in this application.
Discord and Slack: These are multi-threaded communication applications meant for large communities of people.
Slack is an application that was developed for businesses, knowing that their audience was full of people with less technological literacy. However, it is arguable that Slack is incredibly similar to Discord with many identical features and look alike layout. The difference between Discord and Slack is the accessibility and lack of a few key features. There are plenty of icon signifiers in Slack’s layout and Slack also includes pop-up windows if the user hovers over areas that tell what the function does. The shortcuts for actions are also explicitly said, implying that the developers knew that a “small proportion of users rely on keyboard shortcuts” (ARTICLE CITE). There is no quick way to do voice calls, and screen-sharing / calling is not found easily within the Slack system at all.
Discord was developed for the TeamSpeak for the gaming community. For this reason, the Discord application has the most varied range of features, all catering to specific areas of gaming. It is considered to be visually attractive and handy for running large organizations. In the context of education, Discord eliminates a lot of need for other applications (Zoom, GroupMe, etc) because of how much it has. Screensharing, video calls, and voice calls are all created for gamers who will most likely be playing a game while using Discord. For this reason, Discord was made with consideration to the computer’s performance, taking up less internet demand and having less lag overall. With its market audience always on the computer, there is an incredibly robust amount of personalization on every aspect of the application to make it feel familiar for each user. However, Discord’s “gamification” – the “feel” being catered for gaming and entertainment – makes the application feel inappropriate for some classrooms. People who also were never introduced into the gaming community found the application intimidating, confusing, and extremely complicated (186).
eLC and Outlook Emails:
eLC and Outlook are used in conjunction with each other specifically within the UGA system. eLC, or Brightspace, is a good place for students to view asynchronous information posted by instructors for their classes. Locating the correct students for each class is incredibly easy because there is an in-house class list that is available from the Messaging tab. Everything is also organized neatly by class, so it is difficult to accidentally send an announcement to the wrong class.
Outlook and eLC email notifications are deeply flawed. Outlook creates a second eLC email for everybody enrolled in the class, which is then unable to be replied to without an error message coming up. With asynchronous information, it is also customary to send bulk emails or mass messages instead of directly messaging people through IM software. Instructors will often utilize this function. However, bulk emails are often discarded, ignored, and barely read in detail (ARVIX 9). People lose trust in these announcements after instructors try to send more information to fight the students’ confusion and frustration. Thus, there becomes a cycle where emails keep being unread (ARVIX CITE). On top of this, eLC does not allow for group messaging, despite having multiple recipients.
GroupMe: This is a chatroom application that is often used to gather students in the same classes, extracurricular organizations, and/or groups together.
When dissecting why this application was chosen, many students claimed that it’s the perfect place to host a “discourse community” – a community of members with shared interests, ideas, languages, and knowledge (Ly 114). But the biggest reason why this application is used in an educational context is because it is “perhaps the easiest and fastest way to send and receive messages” (Ly 131). This is most likely because it is easy to access through handheld phones, instead of eLC’s awkward desktop navigation to the messaging system. Students also perceive GroupMe to be a great place for varying levels of formality. Especially when the GroupMe is composed of just other classmates, the environment is typically more relaxed, casual, and easygoing. Even when students are put into GroupMe chats with instructors, their “formal” messages are still significantly more casual than messages sent through email. It is socially acceptable to respond as sooner or later as other users want. The application strengthens the users’ “ several forms of rhetorical thinking when they compose messages” depending on who is in the GroupMe (Ly 132).
However, with the application being detached from first-party applications, students often had difficulty inviting people to the chat without another channel of communication. This risks GroupMe having echo chambers or not a diverse amount of people. Users also felt pressured to conform to a certain guideline of correct grammar, with the risk of being perceived negatively by other classmates. Students also had difficulty saving important information and repetitiveness was often seen in this application, hinting at the inability to highlight important information in this application.
Discord and Slack: These are multi-threaded communication applications meant for large communities of people.
Slack is an application that was developed for businesses, knowing that their audience was full of people with less technological literacy. However, it is arguable that Slack is incredibly similar to Discord with many identical features and look alike layout. The difference between Discord and Slack is the accessibility and lack of a few key features. There are plenty of icon signifiers in Slack’s layout and Slack also includes pop-up windows if the user hovers over areas that tell what the function does. The shortcuts for actions are also explicitly said, implying that the developers knew that a “small proportion of users rely on keyboard shortcuts” (ARTICLE CITE). There is no quick way to do voice calls, and screen-sharing / calling is not found easily within the Slack system at all.
Discord was developed for the TeamSpeak for the gaming community. For this reason, the Discord application has the most varied range of features, all catering to specific areas of gaming. It is considered to be visually attractive and handy for running large organizations. In the context of education, Discord eliminates a lot of need for other applications (Zoom, GroupMe, etc) because of how much it has. Screensharing, video calls, and voice calls are all created for gamers who will most likely be playing a game while using Discord. For this reason, Discord was made with consideration to the computer’s performance, taking up less internet demand and having less lag overall. With its market audience always on the computer, there is an incredibly robust amount of personalization on every aspect of the application to make it feel familiar for each user. However, Discord’s “gamification” – the “feel” being catered for gaming and entertainment – makes the application feel inappropriate for some classrooms. People who also were never introduced into the gaming community found the application intimidating, confusing, and extremely complicated (186).
eLC and Outlook Emails:
eLC and Outlook are used in conjunction with each other specifically within the UGA system. eLC, or Brightspace, is a good place for students to view asynchronous information posted by instructors for their classes. Locating the correct students for each class is incredibly easy because there is an in-house class list that is available from the Messaging tab. Everything is also organized neatly by class, so it is difficult to accidentally send an announcement to the wrong class.
Outlook and eLC email notifications are deeply flawed. Outlook creates a second eLC email for everybody enrolled in the class, which is then unable to be replied to without an error message coming up. With asynchronous information, it is also customary to send bulk emails or mass messages instead of directly messaging people through IM software. Instructors will often utilize this function. However, bulk emails are often discarded, ignored, and barely read in detail (ARVIX 9). People lose trust in these announcements after instructors try to send more information to fight the students’ confusion and frustration. Thus, there becomes a cycle where emails keep being unread (ARVIX CITE). On top of this, eLC does not allow for group messaging, despite having multiple recipients.
2. Describe potential guidelines and solutions.
Strive for consistency
Many of the messaging apps are very consistent with how they present themselves for the sake of making it easy for the intended user to adopt. Having the message bar is always on the bottom, the title of the chat on the top, more information and settings showing upon swiping the chat from right to left, and video/voice chat options on the top right corner. This along with the monochrome color scheme and either a “bubble dialogue” setup or a user’s profile picture and username followed by a message in most messaging apps help the client use the application by following common expectations of messaging apps.
Seek universal usability. If not created for, messaging apps tend to try to expand their audience to anyone that wants to communicate with others. GroupMe markets itself as a universal messaging platform with its simplistic features that does not overwhelm anyone. It also allows for SMS messaging for those without the app, which helped its growth in the earlier days. Discord was originally created as a “chat for gamers” and a replacement for teamspeak, a voice chat software commonly used by multiplayer gaming servers, but are since then adding features that allows for a wider user-base such as creating servers from templaces and rebranding to be a multi-utility, multi-threaded chat. Offer informative feedback When uploading images and files on messaging apps, a small space usually pops up on top of the text box to indicate that the file(s) are staged to be sent. If a message failed to sent, usually the message would show up in a different color, like red or gray, sometimes with an indicator on the side to signify to the user that the message being sent had a problem. Some messaging apps offer a “like” or “reaction” system that allows users to see how the message is perceived, an “edited” tag to indicate that the content has been changed, and/or a “sent/read” receipt to indicate whether or not the message was delivered/seen. Design dialogs to yield closure Many of the successful messaging applications create a dialogue for unusual actions, such as deleting a message, deleting a group chat, changing settings, etc. so that the user feel a sense of resolution when they perform the action. It’s important that dialogue boxes are only sent out when an unusual action is being done rather than something that is done on a regular basis, such as sending a message, to avoid redundancy. Prevent errors All of the popular messaging programs provide the user with just enough choices so that they cannot inadvertently create an error, or exception in the program. Permit easy reversal of actions Many messaging programs allow the user to delete their messages after it has been sent, which is one of the more surface examples of this. Some of those messaging apps also allow for the users to change settings on a chat, both functionally and for the sake of personalization, whenever they want. This allows for the user to test out which settings work for them without the fear of not being able to change them later, and have the best overall experience. Keep users in control. The amount of controls, especially with the multi-threaded chats are insane, with Discord and Slack having abilities for admins to control user permissions, reacting to messages, pinning, etc. Many of the popular messaging apps at least have settings to customize the user’s experience on the app, if not changing the settings on an entire chat to fit the needs of the client. Reduce short-term memory load Many of the popular messaging apps do not expect you to memorize much information in the short term. This is done with things like the redundancy of placing the title of the group chat or person you are directly messaging everywhere, allowing you to see the time that a message was sent either on screen, or holding and swipin the chat to the side, and allowing the message history display in the background while performing an action.
Many of the messaging apps are very consistent with how they present themselves for the sake of making it easy for the intended user to adopt. Having the message bar is always on the bottom, the title of the chat on the top, more information and settings showing upon swiping the chat from right to left, and video/voice chat options on the top right corner. This along with the monochrome color scheme and either a “bubble dialogue” setup or a user’s profile picture and username followed by a message in most messaging apps help the client use the application by following common expectations of messaging apps.
Seek universal usability. If not created for, messaging apps tend to try to expand their audience to anyone that wants to communicate with others. GroupMe markets itself as a universal messaging platform with its simplistic features that does not overwhelm anyone. It also allows for SMS messaging for those without the app, which helped its growth in the earlier days. Discord was originally created as a “chat for gamers” and a replacement for teamspeak, a voice chat software commonly used by multiplayer gaming servers, but are since then adding features that allows for a wider user-base such as creating servers from templaces and rebranding to be a multi-utility, multi-threaded chat. Offer informative feedback When uploading images and files on messaging apps, a small space usually pops up on top of the text box to indicate that the file(s) are staged to be sent. If a message failed to sent, usually the message would show up in a different color, like red or gray, sometimes with an indicator on the side to signify to the user that the message being sent had a problem. Some messaging apps offer a “like” or “reaction” system that allows users to see how the message is perceived, an “edited” tag to indicate that the content has been changed, and/or a “sent/read” receipt to indicate whether or not the message was delivered/seen. Design dialogs to yield closure Many of the successful messaging applications create a dialogue for unusual actions, such as deleting a message, deleting a group chat, changing settings, etc. so that the user feel a sense of resolution when they perform the action. It’s important that dialogue boxes are only sent out when an unusual action is being done rather than something that is done on a regular basis, such as sending a message, to avoid redundancy. Prevent errors All of the popular messaging programs provide the user with just enough choices so that they cannot inadvertently create an error, or exception in the program. Permit easy reversal of actions Many messaging programs allow the user to delete their messages after it has been sent, which is one of the more surface examples of this. Some of those messaging apps also allow for the users to change settings on a chat, both functionally and for the sake of personalization, whenever they want. This allows for the user to test out which settings work for them without the fear of not being able to change them later, and have the best overall experience. Keep users in control. The amount of controls, especially with the multi-threaded chats are insane, with Discord and Slack having abilities for admins to control user permissions, reacting to messages, pinning, etc. Many of the popular messaging apps at least have settings to customize the user’s experience on the app, if not changing the settings on an entire chat to fit the needs of the client. Reduce short-term memory load Many of the popular messaging apps do not expect you to memorize much information in the short term. This is done with things like the redundancy of placing the title of the group chat or person you are directly messaging everywhere, allowing you to see the time that a message was sent either on screen, or holding and swipin the chat to the side, and allowing the message history display in the background while performing an action.
C. Proposed Solution:
1. Propose a solution.
As of Fall 2021, UGA welcomed over 40,000 students for the first time in a single semester, and we can safely assume that all of these students have and might continue to use eLC. With its own integrated calendar system, Kaltura media storage, and email/text notification system, eLC can accomodate nearly all of its students portal needs; however, UGA’s central learning platform lacks a comfortable way for students to communicate easily with each other. If you have had the opportunity of using eLC, you might be familiar with the direct message feature of the portal, but you likely have not used it much. While the eLC website showcases properties like its simple UI design, rounded rectangle buttons, and standard notification icons, the chat function signifies anything but easy communication. The text form used to compose a message is the same form used to submit comments under an assignment, or respond to a long answer question on a test. Between the inconsistent, wide formatting, and the lacking functionality, the direct message function of eLC leaves students confused and potentially overwhelmed. Since communication between classmates is crucial, UGA students flock to GroupMe, Slack, and Discord for better instant messaging. Instead of relying on these external communication apps, our solution suggests that UGA implements the successful features of alternative messaging programs into an overhaul of the existing chat feature on eLC. Through extensive research, our group has found that other popular communication tools (Slack, Discord, GroupMe) include some central features that users require: search functionality, chat history, reply/forward/copy options, message counts (read/unread), online status (online/offline), and notification persistence. As one of our sources stated, a simple intuitive communication app will feel like “a natural extension of the email inbox”; in other words, each interactive feature (signifier) of our direct messenger should clearly afford sending and replying to messages. If we could make the necessary changes to eLC’s direct messenger, UGA students would be able to access and send their media to any contact from their classslist. With improvements to the notification aspect of chatting, those using eLC could check if their classmates are online and immediately message them through the university’s portal.
2. How will you measure success?
In order to measure how effectively our new version of eLC meets the standards of a decent direct communication application, our team would devise a checklist with standards based on a collection of research. Assessing our project with documentation would encourage consistency between different versions, however, we would also like to implement direct user feedback. We could potentially invite a diverse pool of users to a lab and observe the interactions of the user with the system; we could collect data on the time needed to send a message, any frustrations with the system, and the participants favorite (or most used) features in communication apps.
D. Summary Video:
Citations:
Arifianto, Muhammad Lukman, and Iqbal Fathi Izzudin. “Students' Acceptance of Discord as an Alternative Online Learning Media.” International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, vol. 16, no. 20, 2021, pp. 179–195.
Finnegan, Matthew. “Slack Targets Non-Tech Users with UI Design Tweaks.” 18 Mar. 2020, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=bth&AN=142907834&site=eds-live&custid=uga1. Accessed 27 June 2022.
Ly, Quang C. “The Case for GroupMe: Rhetorical Thinking Thrives Among Students Using App.” Journal of Literacy & Technology, 2022, pp. 110–158., https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=ehh&AN=144943452&site=eds-live&custid=uga1.
Uddin, Shahadat, et al. “The Impact of Study Load on the Dynamics of Longitudinal Email Communications among Students.” ScienceDirect, Mar. 2014, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.11.007. Accessed 28 June 2022.
Finnegan, Matthew. “Slack Targets Non-Tech Users with UI Design Tweaks.” 18 Mar. 2020, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=bth&AN=142907834&site=eds-live&custid=uga1. Accessed 27 June 2022.
Ly, Quang C. “The Case for GroupMe: Rhetorical Thinking Thrives Among Students Using App.” Journal of Literacy & Technology, 2022, pp. 110–158., https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=ehh&AN=144943452&site=eds-live&custid=uga1.
Uddin, Shahadat, et al. “The Impact of Study Load on the Dynamics of Longitudinal Email Communications among Students.” ScienceDirect, Mar. 2014, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.11.007. Accessed 28 June 2022.