Shuffle

A partially randomised in-class grouping system for students to proactively meet and interact with each other.

Protoype designed by teammate Shencun Li

Meeting new people could be hard and boring.

Shuffle is a freshing grouping system that aims to break awkwardness and raise real-time engagement level between students by using a smart badge and badge vending machine that relate students’ personal interests to the grouping mechanism.

Video demo of how Shuffle works (Created by teammate Scarlet Hu)

My Role

• Brainstormed the design ideas with sketches to illustrate the ideas for primary users

• Designed, conducted user research and summarized the findings

• Iterated of design solutions based on the insights found from user interviews

• Designed the procedures of usability test, conducted the user testing, and evaluated the results

User Research & Design Iteration

Primary Users: Undergraduate Students
Secondary Users: University Students at all levels

Our team conducted a pilot study on collecting students' opinions on their current in-class grouping experience by creating an online questionnaire with the following findings and pain points:

• Students acknowledged the benefits of collaborative learning

• Current randomisation grouping system is “boring and ineffective”

• Students would like to meet new people but were lack of initiatives

• The need for a more engaging in-class group integration strategy in the long-term

• Ideation: Based on the findings from pilot study, we came up with our user persona and the initial design solution to address their pain points.

• MVP: The solution was further iterated by conducting user interviews and evaluated with 2x2 feature pritorisation matrix in order to prioritize and implement the features

• Pre-Launch: An on-site usability test with the physical prototype of MVP was run to test whether Shuffle meets users’ expectation of having an engaging and efficient in-class grouping experience

Results

• Over 100 survery were answered by college students on a global scale, including but not limited to Britain, United States and China

• Participants mentioned Shuffle “feels fun to touch” and the application of using a physical badge provides “a good amout of forcing but not forceful to have a natural conversation”

• 85% of the paritipants would like to use Shuffle when they need to group with other students in class