Universal Design for Learning: Meditation App
In Universal Design for Learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, my classmates and I created a meditation app that considered the needs of all users including users with disabilities.
The goal of the app is to help students self-regulate in order to engage in learning.
Collaborative Project
2/2021-5/2021
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I conducted research on target users and the existing market. I interviewed teachers and students in order to better understand the needs of the target population.
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I created prototypes based on needs assessments and initial ux research. After testing initial prototypes, I made iterations based on feedback.
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I tested the product with 21 students and made design iterations based on their feedback.
Problem 🤔
Elementary school age children and adolescents deal with anxiety and difficult emotions, however, little is done in formal education to teach children how to regulate emotions. Children need more avenues to learn how to regulate their emotions and manage their anxiety (Fontana & Slack, 2012).
Mental health is important for the well being of children. When children can self-regulate and learn tools to manage their anxiety, they will be better able to handle various situations (Fontana & Slack, 2012).
Opportunity 👐
How might we help students self-regulate in order to engage in learning?
Field Research 🔍
Elementary-school aged children and adolescents experience anxiety and work to process difficult emotions. However, little is done in formal education to teach children how to regulate their emotions and prioritize their mental health. To resolve this, our group found that mindfulness has several benefits for elementary students, including improvements in working memory, attention, academic skills, social skills, emotional regulation, and self-esteem. (Meiklejohn et al, 2012)
Our group decided on an interactive mobile application (with optional low-tech downloads) to keep our target audience engaged. Our research found that 9-12 year olds have interests, knowledge, and reasoning skills that are continually developing. Children in this age range learn best through storytelling, active imaginations, and interactive learning. They like to initiate activities and take on responsibilities (Fontana & Slack, 2012) As such, we created the mobile app features to focus on engagement, experiences, and choice.
Personas 🤝
We created detailed personas of potential users so that we could design a product with the users’ specific needs in mind.
Design Idea 💡
We applied universal design for learning themes to our story board to make sure that the product would be accessible to all different learning preferences.
Prototyping 📦
We spent weeks researching UDL, mindfulness, and meditation in order to create an app that would be more accessible than the current market. We brainstormed possible app ideas and made sketches of what this would look like (see page 22). We then designed a prototype and tested it with users.
Testing 🧪
We tested our prototype with 21 people. We were given feedback to add a mood tracker so users can see how meditation affects their mood. Our next step would be to create a mood tracker in the app.