GURU / Microsoft Design Expo 2010

scalandro — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:48:52 +0000

We are honored to have been selected to debut GURU today at the Microsoft Design Expo 2010. Below is a brief description of the project along with our slideshow and a short video demonstrating how GURU helps teens.

GURU is a service that helps teenagers discover and grow creative interests and learn about the vast array of creative careers with the help of industry professionals. GURU has two components—a website and a browser widget. The browser widget recommends careers and professions to teens, based on the content that they are viewing. On the website, teens can explore day-in-the-life stories and other content posted by professionals, ask questions of professionals, and share their interests with friends. GURU is based on an advertising model and is free to both teens and professionals.

06.03.10 / GURU: The Videosketch

scalandro — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 02:04:38 +0000

Check out the video sketch that we played at our final Graduate Studio 2 presentations for the Microsoft / Motorola Design Challenge!

GURU Final Presentation

aliyabaptista — Mon, 24 May 2010 23:24:37 +0000

Download the GURU final presentation here.

05.05.10 / Final Presentation

ctemplet3 — Wed, 05 May 2010 19:59:09 +0000

The Five People Who… are very happy! We got good feedback after the final presentation and we’re looking forward to presenting at Motorola on Friday. We are also excited and happy that we have been chosen to represent our class and our school at Microsoft. Thank you sponsors and instructors for all of your feedback and guidance throughout the semester.

- The Five People Who

Final Presentation

05.02.10 / Data Visualizations

ctemplet3 — Sun, 02 May 2010 23:03:32 +0000

With our service GURU, teens can tag and save content from professionals. That content will be categorized into sections based on the career areas that they are related to. In that way, teens can see career fields emerging from the content that they have saved. We’ve been working on different ways to show their saved content. The first view shows their categories of interests with a detailed listing of content shown at right. The second view is by geography. Teens can see where professionals are to learn where certain industries are concentrated and can also see the locations of colleges and arts programs recommended by professionals.

The category view helps teens and parents understand and explore the teen’s interests.

The geographic view helps teens and parents look for opportunities to continue an identified interest in a college or other educational program.

04.21.10 / Presentation Progress

ctemplet3 — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:44:05 +0000

We’ve gotten some great feedback this week and now have initial versions of the our UI and videosketch script. Going forward we will be:

refining the UI and interactions
refining scenario script and storyboards
planning the photo shoot for the video sketch

To refine the UI and interactions we have done color and type studies and shared our designs with other designers for feedback. Keeping teens in mind, we’ve created a visual system that is fun and encourages exploration.

Sample UI:

For the videosketch, we have iterated on our script based on read-throughs, storyboards, and preliminary script recordings. We have teens and parents lined up for our photoshoot this Friday and in preparation we will be scouting the location to discuss how we’ll frame our shots and stage the location with relevant props.

Part of our initial storyboards:

04.14.10 / Testing with Users

ctemplet3 — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:36:23 +0000

Our team completed mockups of several screens from our service and mapped out several tasks to test with users. We have conducted three sessions so far, one with a family and two with groups of high school students. In each session one or two group members went through the tasks with one user at a time, explaining the tasks (such as “share a video with a friend”), encouraging the user to think aloud, and taking notes. Below is a photo of the family session in which we tested our service with two teenagers and their parents.
Overall we have had a very positive response from our testing participants. We were also able to identify some points of confusion in the interface which we will work to correct. One example is the list of career or interest areas in the widget interface. Some students thought that the list was related to the professional/guru whose profile was featured in the widget. For example, there’s an “animation” listing and perhaps that could be animation by the featured professional. We will now take this feedback and look at other options for presenting the information before testing the interface again. Our next steps are interface and service refinement and planning for the final presentation.

Posted by Cheryl

04.12.10 / Concept Update Presentation

scalandro — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:18:25 +0000

And now we present, GURU.

0412_fivepeoplewhopresFINAL

04.07.10 / IA and Wireframe Development

ctemplet3 — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 21:16:17 +0000

We have developed an initial information architecture based on features and task flows. The IA below is from the perspective of a guru/professional; students and parents will have different items in the account section. Based on the IA, we are developing wireframes and beginning to fill in sample content, which will help users imagine the service during testing.

We will begin user testing this Saturday with a few teenagers and next week we will go to two high schools to test our service with more teens.

Posted by: Cheryl

03.31.10 / Concept Refinement

ctemplet3 — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:19:45 +0000

Since the presentation last Wednesday, we have been discussing the feedback that we received and refining our concept. Some of the main takeaways that we got from feedback were to focus our concept and to more thoroughly consider the parent/teacher role and how we can keep teenagers engaged with our service.
In the photo above, Sarah is helping the team to categorize and define the features of our product.

The second photo shows some of the interest areas that users might explore through our service. We have decided to focus on users exploring their creative interests and finding and learning about experts in different creative fields. Currently, we are mapping out the system architecture in preparation for wireframing and paper-prototyping.
Posted by: Cheryl