PROJECT INFO

1-week Project
New York, NY

TEAM

Individual Project 

MY ROLE

End-to-end UX design from user research, concept to visual design. 

4 INTERVIEWS

3 children (10-12-year-old) and 1 teacher 
at I.S. 61, Queens, New York

Findings

• Most of the kids don’t like history because they feel history is too boring.  
• 2 of 4 kids don’t like to read a big textbook.  
• The kids like history if the teacher is interesting. 
• 3 of 4 kids search on Google for interesting history topics. 
• They like rewards when they achieve a goal. 
• Some of the kids learn history from Youtube. 

"It all depends on the teacher. If the teacher is interesting, I will like the history class."

- Kid 1, 11-year-old

1ST GAME

Creating a history timeline and share a story  
at I.S. 61, Queens, New York

Findings

• The kids like games and they like playing with other children. 
• They collaborated with each other in the game to achieve a goal. 
• The kids like to share stories they know or the stories related to their daily life. 
• They are curious. They want to know why a historical event happened.  
• The kids like building on others’ ideas. 

"If it is something I am interested in, I will Google it and try to learn more about it."

- Kid 2, 11-year-old

2ND GAME

What is your favorite American symbol and why? 
at I.S. 61, Queens, New York

Findings

• The kids like creative drawings. 
• Sometimes the kids are easily distracted by other things they are interested in. 
• They are focus and quiet when are doing hands-on activities. 
• They have their opinions about why they like or dislike something. 

"I don't like I have to read a big history textbook in order to write something. It’s just too much reading."

- Kid 3, 10-year-old

PERSONA

James 
11-year-old, 5th grade
 
What he likes 
Playing games, Reading, 
Sharing interesting stories with his classmates, 
French Fries, and Dogs. 
“I like reading but sometimes history is too boring. I want to enjoy it when I study history.” 

Concept 1
Timeline & Game
• Linear approach 
• The timeline provides historical context   
• The game is fun and interesting 
• Game variation is limited
• Difficulty to keep up the interest

Concept 2
Daily History Workout 
• Non-linear approach 
• Focus on the topics the user is interested in 
• Daily routine 
• Tracking the progress    
• Rewards system
• Difficult to keep up the interests 

Concept 3
Social Media for Learning 
• Community of Learning  
• Learn with kids all over the world
• Scalability to other domains
• Keep up the interest in the community  
• Higher barrier bringing the community together

Timeline 
Context for history learning 

Interest
Finding favorite topics for kids

Sharing
A learning community for kids

Timeline 

James opens the app and sees the Ancient Egypt timeline. The timeline shows multiple events that happened in Egypt's history.  
He likes that he is able to scroll down to view all the important events that happened in history. The illustration gives him a quick idea of the topic.   
He taps on the Great Pyramid of Giza.

View history topics  

James sees all the stories and questions posted by his classmates and teacher related to the Great Pyramid. 
He sees his teacher Ms. Ann just posted an animation video about the Great Pyramid which receives a lot of likes from his friends. 
He wants to share an interesting finding he recently happens to know when he googled the Great Pyramid. 
He taps the add button. 

Post image and text  

James sees the images he previously saved on his phone. 
He selects the image he wants to post. 
He adds the text to talk about what he knew about the Great Pyramid. 
He taps the post button. 

James' Profile
He sees his post displayed on the Great Pyramid page. 
He likes it’s so easy to share something he learned with his classmates.
He decides to follow this topic and some other topics he is interested in. 
From his profile, he can see all his posts and how many friends are following his posts.  
He sees that he received some likes and comments for the learning he just posted. 
 

James' Favorites 
James sees all the topics he follows on the Favorite page. 
He likes the app also suggests some topics that he might be interested in. 

Navigation 

James taps on the menu icon. 
He sees a list of history around the world. Each region will have a timeline with important and interesting topics.
James is happy that he can learn the history of all over the world in this app. 

Special thanks to 

Anqi Zhao (Teacher at I.S. 61, Queens, NY)  
Alice, James, Jonathan, Heiley, Sophia, Ken, Eric, Amy, Jone, Andrew etc. (Students at I.S. 61, Queens, NY)
 
Icons credit by Freepik from www.flaticon.com