Prototype

In the prototype stage, we build to test our ideas and role-play the learner or user experience. Our prototyping approach to building out the screens and interactions support us in visualizing how the app works.

We decided that the creation of a mobile mentoring app, would best fit our goals of creating a structured and focused service that would help temporary residents in their journey to becoming permanent residents. Building out a fully functional app would not be feasible within the timeframe of this course. Instead, we decided to build the screens as a prototype to represent how a typical user would interact and engage with the app. The prototype created in Adobe XD, an industry standard software, is meant to represent a proof of concept that would be handed off to an agency for further development, if the project was funded at a later date. The final deliverable includes a video tour to showcase the user interaction, a curriculum user guide and a postcard for marketing and promotion.

Using a Persona To Represent The Target Audience

Part of the process in creating the prototype involves developing personas to inform us of what a ‘typical user’ looks like. Personas represent the different user types that might use a service, product, site, or brand. Creating and testing with personas helps clients understand users’ needs, experiences, behaviours, and goals.

The use of personas in web development helps developers recognize that different people have different needs and expectations. When building a new website or app, personas can help identify with the user. In our case, the persona we used was a student named Akiko (see image on left).

Learner-Centric Pedagogical Strategies

The pedagogic foundation of our project is the learning paradigm of Vygotsky’s social development theory whereby, learners build an individual system of knowledge, actively participate in learning, that increases in conceptual complexity through interaction and linkage with multiple external perspectives (David, 2014).

The app has two aspects. As a digital artifact, it has a particular set of technical and aesthetic specifications. However, in a second aspect, the app serves as a catalyst for the growth of an affinity network: a scaffolding within which a web of relationships can be grown and nurtured. In both aspects, our pedagogical choices were informed by the “Learning by Design” approach articulated by Kalantzis and Cope (2010).

In keeping with a knowledge and learner-centric approach, we adopted practices such as the flipped classroom, self-reflective, goal-focused activities and badges for motivation within the app.