Design a Better Andrew

Design ChallengeLet’s picture it being Thursday and Andrew saying to himself, “I have time to work on that

assignment due on Monday, I need to do work on what’s due tonight.” Then let’s pretend it is now Sunday night and Andrew just remembered about that assignment due on Monday, but on top of that there are other 2 things he has to do for Tuesday. He is worried because he has to go to his placements and work before he can get a chance to finish his assignment before class. Andrew is your typical busy and tired graduate student whose schedule is being pulled in 4 different directions.

For this design challenge I have asked Andrew, to keep track of his schedule for a whole week. This is what he gave me.

Monday – March 21st Woke up and headed to ELL placement at Jack Jouett, arrived at 9:03 right when class began. After class went home, checked email, and then headed to Goochland High School to meet with the

Placement teacher. Talked to her and the principal but took no notes. Went to 5051 Went home and answered emails, set up appointment with Dr. Pease

Tuesday – March 22nd Woke up, headed to class early in order to do the readings since he did not have one of the books. While he finished one of the readings he did not do the other one and didn’t do either of the S/E journals.

Went home and used his computer for an hour, checked email, but didn’t do any work. Had his soccer practice, made sure to write the practice plan before he headed out. Texted with Csaba about what the plan was for the lesson we would be teaching the next day

Wednesday – March 23rd Woke up and headed to ELL, arrived a minute late. Finished ELL and went downtown the mall. Returned home briefly and looked over the lesson plan. Went to 4885 and taught the lesson plan with Csaba. Submitted his lesson plan that day because he

was unclear as to when to send it to Laura. Went to 7100 Rewrote his things to do board to match what he had done and what new things needed to be done

Thursday – March 24th Met with Dr. Pease to discuss organizational strategies. Went home and fooled around on YouTube and took a nap. Went to 3882 class Finished his observation report resubmission and worked on practice VCLA items.

Friday – March 25th Woke up, went to his America Reads placement for first period. Went home and checked his email, saw he had one of his calendar reminders for his blog

assignment. Did the VCLA Returned to walker for 4th period

Saturday – March 26th Woke up, forgot to check his email Completed Blog Assignment and worked on Engineering Design Project

Sunday – March 27th Checked Email in the afternoon Worked on Engineering Design project

I also kept track of some of the things that he is doing, which I made observations on over the span of a week. This is what I have found, that will inform by ability to square in on a problem and later on form some solutions.

> We can see him thinking about what his priorities are: It makes sense to work on the assignment that is due first Taking a break every once in a while, to be able to do it all over again, so it makes sense to

spend Sunday night working on that assignment> We can imagine him feeling a bit overworked because

There are so many different classes and assignments due in any given week and not all the teachers give us the rubrics and info on them 4 weeks in advance

He has to worry about getting enough practicum hours, creating lessons he can teach and filming, and his students

Not all the teachers give the same level of detail for assignments and so the ones that are more confusing and less clear will be pushed off to the last minute

> We can also imagine him seeing other classmates that are: Putting the same assignments off and so, it may give him a false sense of security Doing things far in advance and exclaiming how easy it was

> We can finally, see him doing so many other things that he is expected to do, such as Job searching Maintaining relationships with friends, family and significant others Coaching Working in schools

Therefore, this design challenge becomes more complicated than helping Andrew remain on top of his assignments and other school and work responsibilities. The problem becomes helping Andrew develop a plan that is sustainable and all encompassing because he has so many things going on. We need to develop a way that helps him prioritize his responsibilities in such a way that he does not become overwhelmed by work.

With this in mind, these are the specifications and constraints for this project: Not miss any more assignments this semester (s) Not forget assignments until last minute (s) I am not a professionally trained life planner or organizer (c)

Develop knowledgeWhen Andrew expressed what he wished to improve on, he expressed a desire to not do

things last minute and forget about assignments. He has also expressed unhappiness about his few current ways of ‘organization’. He has so far tried the following things, which he said have not worked well for him:

Writing down his assignments in a portable agenda

Aside from the goals that he made for himself, and based on the further research conducted and outlined in the Design Challenge section above, I think that a related goal is to find a time management plan that works well for him, that he can stick to from now on, and which also does not become a chore for him.

Ideate SolutionsThese are some of the solutions that I came up with after our first week of tracking behavior, record keeping and thinking about ideas.

Having a place to access “to do’s” that is easily portable and compatible across technology platforms. He can do this by using something like Google Calendar or his Calendar on his computer, both of which can and will sync to his phone, to each other and to his UVA calendar. This way he can set up updates so that he can be reminded of when things are due. He could even have these technologies remind him ahead of time. This would meet the specifications

because if he uses these technologies he will be reminded of assignments as often and as early as he would like so he won’t miss assignments or be forced to complete them last minute if he forgets. This also meets the constraints because I am inexperienced and chose to use a platform that can work independently of my level of skill.

Using a white board that is kept in your room, that lists your “to do’s” for the week. This is an easy way to have your responsibilities listed out for you every week. He can use Sunday night to write out his To Do’s for the week. This way, not will he have them listed there all week; he will also be forced to look up this information and have the due dates refreshed in his mind. This takes less time than having to work on a master calendar for hours and it once again keeps me out of having to make an elaborate plan that I am not trained to make. Furthermore, once again by being reminded each week about assignments he will have a chance to not forget what is due and also have more time to do them ahead of time.

I could give him a list of To Do’s for the rest of the semester that he can keep on his desktop. I have a list for myself from the Reminder’s app, of all of the assignments we have for the rest of the semester and I volunteered to have him use the list I made and keep it on his desktop and reference it. This way he has the information on a device that he uses every day and it is pre-made and does not require him to do any extra work. This way all the assignments are listed and he cannot forget about them and therefore he will have a chance to do them ahead of time. Finally, this is something that has worked for me in the past and it also does not involve any real skill on my part.

All of these solutions I think take in to account that he does not have much time in which to get organized. So I provided an option for him to sit down and get organized all at once, in small chunks or use me as a resource. I have also left it open ended so that he can chose what kind of information he would want to put on his calendar and how many days in advance he sees fit to set the reminders for because he knows when he works best.

Build PrototypeAndrew has chosen to work on creating a Google calendar. He has chosen this because it contacts

well with all of his gadgets so it’s more accessible. It is also more organized and interactive than a white board or having the picture on his desktop. Taking into consideration all of the information I have already included about this particular idea above, there are a few things that we included more detail on now that we’ve decided on a plan.

Not only is he going to put in his assignments, he will also create reminders. These reminds will pop up 3 times: 3 days, 2 days, as well as the day before an assignment is due. This way he has three chances not to forget as well as 2 chances to work on it as far in advance as he can. We also decided that larger assignments would have different reminder increment: 1.5 weeks, 1 week, and 3 days, 2 days and 24 hours in advance. This in the hopes that it will not come down to 24 hours.

Furthermore he will use his Google Calendar because it sync’s well with his phone, computer calendar, notifications, email and UVA’s website. This is also something that has more features and options as far as the reminder system.

Finally, he will fill in his calendar on Thursday because he has fewer classes that day and fewer responsibilities. We also thought he should prioritize so that he has less to do all at

once, so it doesn’t become overwhelming.

Test PrototypeSince he began working on his organizational skills using this resource he has only forgotten

to turn in one assignment out of 3. However, this has not helped complete assignments ahead of time, he is still working on assignments last minute. He has also only posted his major assignments and no other responsibilities on the calendar so it is not helping him remember his readings. He turned off the reminders because there was too many of them and they became annoying.

Calendar BeforeWe can see that he did not use his calendar

Calendar After

We can see that he has only posted the big assignments that are due, and no other minor responsibilities.

On the right are the reminders he set up, before he had no reminders for any of the assignments. These are all set up to give him those reminders. After using this

system for 2 week these were the results:

However, 3 of those reminders were not actually helpful, since he forgot one assignment.

Out of the 3 assignments he had due only 2 were turned in on time. That is a success rate of 66%. Evaluate Prototype

The data discussed above from the results of this 2 week use of Google Calendar has lead me to believe that he problem may not be his organization but in fact his motivation to complete assignments. It was noticed that the only assignments that he forgot about was one that he did not really find useful or engaging. Therefore, my task is to increase motivation for seemingly ‘busy work’ assignments by trying to show him their purpose. This within itself is beyond my ability, however it is noted how alarming that is because motivating students to complete assignments that they might see as boring will be my career.

His data also shows that fill out a Google calendar is too time consuming considering his schedule. If he were to include everything that he has to do it would take him too long. Also the reminder system lead him into just waiting for the one or two day reminders because he knew they were coming and so he left it until then. Not only that but having 3-5 reminders for each assignment can become overwhelming, and as he’s explained, annoying. All of this data will inform the refining of the design and it will be outlined in the revise prototype bellow.

Revise PrototypeWith all of this in mind we are 3 weeks from the end of the school year and we still have to turn in

7 more assignments. It is more important than ever to help him come up with a plan to stay on top of his work. Using this data I will discuss with him possibly changing the reminder system to somewhere between really early reminders and really late reminders so that there is only one and the fear of forgetting about an assignment will prompt him to work on it reasonably early. He will also only focus on posting his big assignments on the Google Calendar and the idea of including his schedule and other minor assignments will be scrapped because it is beyond the scope of this project and too time consuming at the moment.

In addition there are a few modifications that will be made to our original idea that were indirectly informed by the data. I will help with providing reminders for assignments and in some ways help him not forget his smaller assignments. This is to attempt to help motivate him to complete his assignments earlier because it brings in another person that can hold him accountable. He will also take a screenshot of the list of assignments and due dates which he can have shown on his desktop at all times as part of his background image. This way it is something that he can see and revisit throughout the day and not just when he pulls out the calendar or gets a reminder. It also does not involve additional work since he already has this information put onto his Google Calendar.

Test Prototype Revision With the revisions made, Andrew went ahead and tried again. He has

changed his desktop picture so that it contains the assignments due for the next few weeks. The sample list of reminders that he used for his desktop background is on the left. This is the picture after he completed all of the assignments up to this Monday. In this new system all of the assignments are still listed, but there are fewer reminders for each one.

Since he started using this system, he has completed all of his assignments on time. We will continue observing the effectiveness of this system until the end of the school year. Therefore, his success rate for completing all assignments on time is now 100%. However, he was left

rushing to finish one, but still managed to on time. This is because he did not have the textbook on hand ahead of time.

Also it is important to note that his calendar looks the same as before and it was not included again in this set of observations since there was nothing changed. Lastly, having me remind him about assignments was not necessary, he was able to stay on top of his assignments without my help. Bellow is the picture of his desktop with the updated list of assignments.

Bellow, I have included pictures of his calendar for this week and his desktop background.

Evaluate Prototype Revision This tells me that using his desktop as a board for his reminders was a good idea. It also tells

me that taking the 3 sets of reminders off may have also helped. They were meant to encourage him from doing things last minute. However, since the only reason he did not get one of his assignments done on time is an anomaly since he did not have the textbook. I think no conclusion can really be drawn about that. All in all he said that using Google calendar is something he will continue doing in the future because he liked having everything in one place.

As far as the specifications are concerned, I first did not meet the specifications with the first prototype because he did not turn in all of his assignments on time. However, after the revision of the two specifications one was meat, while the other was inconclusive due to the anomaly. My reminding him of assignments and suggesting that he come to grounds more often to get work done has lead Andrew to also came to school earlier on Tuesdays and Thursday to get work done. This was my attempt at encouraging motivation.