The Problem
Studying at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) can be extremely stressful and many students struggle. Academic Development at CMU is a department that provides free tutoring services to all students on campus. However, Academic Development faces problems with students not sticking with the methods they’re taught and high early drop off. How can we use design and technology to help Academic Development and their tutees perform better?
CMU-DO
CMU-DO is a simple and highly structured todo list for students that follows the Eisenhower Priority Matrix taught by CMU Academic Development. We built a mobile web app that makes it easier for students learn the method and stick with it.
By opening this up to the campus, we lower the barrier to entry for getting help and encourage more students to work with Academic Development.
Onboarding
New users are given a quick overview of how the Eisenhower Priority Matrix works and how to use CMU-DO.
Structured Organization
Tasks are strictly categorized so students are forced to think about prioritization.
Breaking Down Big Tasks
CMU-DO encourages students to take large, vague tasks and turn them into many small, actionable ones. This reinforces strategies taught by Academic Development.
Project Overview
My Role
Design, Research, Full Stack Web Dev
Client
CMU Academic Development
Project Duration
6 Weeks
Team Members
Madeline Duque, Suvrath Penmetcha, Prof H (adviser)
We partnered with Academic Development at CMU to help struggling students learn better organizational skills and improve tutoring retention.
This project demonstrates both design and development together in a limited time frame.
To learn more about how we designed and built CMU-DO, keep reading to see our process.
Research
Expert Interviews
User Interviews
Design
Wireframing
Paper Prototype
Digital Prototype
Development
Tech Stack
Coding
Research
Expert Interviews
We spoke with members of Academic Development to learn about how they operate their tutoring sessions. Every new tutee gets taught the same study strategies, a big one being the Eisenhower Priority Matrix.We also learned that students who come to Academic Development are swallowing their pride, making them hesitant and likely to drop off.
User Interviews
We then ran a survey and also spoke with many students about their study habits. We learned that students who don’t have a formal organizational system tended to keep everything in their head but often forget and miss prioritize tasks. Students who do have a system for organization tended to use self created systems and were very hesitant to change.
We realized that we couldn’t magically turn students into studying machines by teaching new strategies. What we could do was make it as painless as possible to learn by themselves and encourage them to return to Academic Development.
CMU student survey results about study habits
Design
Wireframing
We decided to create a tool that would make it as easy as possible to start and stick with one method taught. To that end, we chose to create a digital version of the Eisenhower Priority Matrix.
Earliest wireframe where we considered a desktop app
Next iteration of a rough mobile app
Paper Prototype
We then wanted to figure out the app flow and mental model of the Eisenhower Priority Matrix. We used paper prototypes to test ideas and create new flows on the spot with users.
Digital Prototype
Finally we built a click through prototype in InVision to test the interactions and flow on a mobile device.
Development
Tech Stack
We then started coding an MVP app that Academic Development could use. We chose MeteorJS, a JavaScript framework, for our tech stack. It would allow us to quickly get up and running while providing reactivity out of the box.
Coding
We spent our final weeks coding a functional prototype of CMU-DO.
I was the only team member with prior experience using Meteor, so I also taught my teammates and helped to oversee development.
What’s next
After some dev crunch time, we deployed CMU-DO publically and demoed it to our Academic Development stakeholders. We also gave access to the codebase to Academic Development and our Information Systems faculty. While my team was moving off the project, if Academic Development wanted to partner with Information Systems again, IS would happily add another team on the project again.