UX Case Study
Online Presentation Practice Center Review
Reduced task complete time by 44%
02
What Does the Presentation Practice Center Need?
I interviewed employees at the presentation practice center and learned the process of giving and receiving feedback.
Key Questions:
What makes a presentation good?
Good communication between speaker and audience. Take the audience on a journey!
What tools do you use to give feedback?
Qualtrics (a survey creating platform) is mainly used by tutors.
What features do you wish existed?
Video is a good tool to see exactly where to improve.
Teachers of presentation skills are in the business of building confidence.
Students can't easily observe their own body language and often don’t remember specifics later when receiving feedback
03
Research: Persona Creation
Creating Proto Personas
I developed two user personas using my research, helping me to see their perspectives as I design for them.
Conclusion
Oriented my goals to make the process simple for those just starting to learn to present well.
04
Preparing for Prototyping and Usability Testing
Writing Scenarios
After creating personas and writing a task list, I used them to write 6 scenarios in which tutors and students will be communicating. This will guide my prototyping.
Scenarios are scripts that help my volunteers get into character for testing my prototype so I can improve it. They have two parts: background for information and task for what to do.
01
You are a freshman communication student who is living at home for off track, taking a public speaking class, and wanting to improve speaking skills. You know about the presentation practice center and would like to give it a try. There is a time difference, however, and you can’t easily make it to a remote appointment with all your other responsibilities. You learn there is an option to send in a video of you practicing your speech for tutors to review and give feedback.
Send a video of your practice persuasive speech. Ask for help making it shorter.
02
You are a student tutor at the Presentation Practice Center who teaches students online as well as in-person. A student just sent in a video asking for feedback.
Watch the video.
03
As you watch the video the student sent, you notice that they are doing fine in most cases, but you’d like to give feedback on an awkward transition where one slide made little sense placed where it was.
Give feedback on that awkward transition.
04
You finished the video and are ready to give more feedback. The student did wonderful with their slides and made good eye contact. They could take out one slide and refine their conclusion, as it was too wordy.
Finish giving feedback and deliver it to the student.
05
You just got feedback from your first video review.
Look at the feedback from the tutor.
06
A few weeks later, your receive another video from the same student, and you’d like to see if they’ve gotten better at what advice was given previously.
View previous feedback and note improvement or otherwise.
Conclusion
Writing scenarios gave me guidelines for my prototype.
05
User Testing Round 1
Testing the Paper Prototype
I created a paper prototype and usability tested it using the scenarios I wrote on 3 volunteers.
Paper prototype of scenario 3
3 Usability Tests
My last volunteer helped me test my prototype
Observations
Users weren't sure where to click to add a comment to the video.
Wording was causing user hesitation in several screens, particularly the first.
Takeaways
Require certain actions before being able to move on.
Users often did not read what is important.
“Video Feedback View” was more confusing than helpful. Get rid of the feedback view button.
Conclusion
Wording of buttons and actions is crucial to guiding the user to next steps.
06
User Testing Round 2
Testing Low-fi Prototypes
Based on what I learned from round 1, I created digital wireframes in Figma and usability tested them on 3 volunteers.
Scenario 1 in low-fi prototypes
For Scenario 1, I changed wording on the first page (from "Online Review (by tutors on staff)" to "Send Video for Online Review") and gave the fields more equal importance.
3 Usability Tests
Takeaways
Adding joy is important for the confirmation page
Inactive dropdowns lead to surprise and confusion.
The order of the scenarios needed to make sense
Conclusion
Users need to be told what is happening up front.
07
User Testing Round 3
Testing my Medium-fidelity Prototype for Clarity
Based on what I learned, I created a refined prototype in Figma and usability tested it on 3 volunteers.
3 Usability Tests
One of my volunteers moving through the last scenario.
Takeaways
Help the user know that certain actions are required—but make it fun!
For scenario 1, users still see the video file in overview and click on it first.
Tags are more of a side note, unnecessary to most users.
Conclusion
If a screen doesn’t work, it doesn’t work!
08
Final Product Showcase
Final Prototype Based on User Testing Insights
I refined my prototype in Figma based on what I learned from my last round of usability testing.
01
You are a freshman communication student who is living at home for off track, taking a public speaking class, and wanting to improve speaking skills. You know about the presentation practice center and would like to give it a try. There is a time difference, however, and you can’t easily make it to a remote appointment with all your other responsibilities. You learn there is an option to send in a video of you practicing your speech for tutors to review and give feedback.
Send a video of your practice persuasive speech. Ask for help making it shorter.
09
Impact & Lessons Learned
After completing the project, I reflect on what to do better next time and what I have improved on during this project.
Impact
Reduced time from 18 minutes to 8 minutes. That’s by 44% just in three iterations!
Time from idea to final product reduced by 3 work days since the last project.
I learned
If I were to redo this project, I'd conduct more ethnographic interviews before prototyping.
Additionally, I discovered a significant resemblance to Loom’s main feature, potentially rendering the project irrelevant. Regardless, I gained valuable insights by completing it.
