Task analysis is very important in the design process and in helping the team understand what the user wants to get out of the application which we will be building. In order to understand what a user wants from an application a range of users had to be investigated. There are many different types of users who interact with learning platforms and it is important that these users are all investigated and that the team understand what the users want to gain from the learning platforms/applications. With this information our user profiles and personas could then be written, these could only be done once a task analysis was written and it was discovered what the users want to get out of these applications and the learning outcomes they need to gain.
Online learning applications were researched, there were many key points which were recorded and used to back up future design decisions. Learning platforms and social networking platforms both had main features which corresponded with the interface purpose, for example blogging is used to present an archive of textual information, it is informative with little interactivity, learning platforms have a wide range of differing interactive features but there are specific features which are used to aid student learning at specific levels. These results will be merged to obtain the most productive website which will teach students about FIRA.
Key points are needed in an online learning application:
· Interaction is key
· Children want to interact with something and have it be fun and do things when they complete things, Sam learning has animations which clap when a student submits a piece of work, congratulating the user for the interaction, users enjoy feedback and it encourages them to complete tasks and return.
· The instructions for online learning must be clear and to the point.
· Given our age group we wanted the process to be easy to navigate, if users get bored or stuck they will not want to continue to interact or do the work, so the written content must be brief and specific with clear instructions.
· Users need to be set a task with a clear understanding of what they need to achieve and learn at the end of the process.
Bloggs don’t offer much in the way of colourful designs, there can be backgrounds and headers styled using templates but blogs are used to display written content so they are kept plain and as an archive of information to be browsed through and commented on. The blogging/commenting website which the team will be creating using the research findings will be used for teaching purposes, therefore even though it is being used in a professional environment it needs to cater to its targeted audience and age group, and children at GCSE age group react well to interactivity, personalisation and colours.
Looking at the online Learning websites, they were very interactive, colourful and had the option to personalise user profiles. These features brought to attention the importance of making learning online fun. The blogging websites were plain, their main function to display written content. The team must find a medium between too colourful and interactive and too plain and textual content filled. The Bitesize online commenting feature was colour coded and this made reading the page more understandable, it is feature like this which will need to be integrated in to the final website in order to make online learning fun.
The Profile setting is a feature which student interact with first as it is a feature which they can personalise, this is a key feature on a learning website as it is a feature which gets the user involved with the webpage, once the attention of the user has been attained and the page personalised it is more likely that the users will continue to work through the content and work to a higher standard as the work submitted will have their newly styled and individualised profile information making their submitted content.
After the task analysis was completed its results were compared against the results of the personas and competitive analysis, the team decided that an online blogging type interface would be designed which would implement fun and interactive features, just like the interactive learning platforms. Researching the teaching plans showed us what features were needed to keep the students interacting with the educational aspects of online learning and what the basic requirements are for online learning, this gave the team the information required to build up the textual content in a specific layout. Aspects of the online learning platforms (large headers, interactivity) need to be integrated in to the final commenting website.
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