In this section, the primary design method of Askplorer is described first. Then, the design process of Askplorer will be explained chronologically. The design process includes: “Origin of the project,” “Initial plan,” “The project changed,” “New plan with brainstorming, interviews and observations,” “Literature review,” “Sketching and prototyping,” “Video shooting and participatory design,” and “User study”.

Informant design
     The design process of Askplorer involves informant design. Informant design is a method in which a designer uses firsthand perspectives of the users and the people who have expertise in the subject domain (Scaife et al. 1997). Informant design is one of the learner-centered approaches, and the advantage is that a designer can include users’ feedback from the early stage of development. It typically “emphasizes the use of ‘low-tech’ and ‘lightwight’ communicative tools“ (Scaife et al. 1997). I used paper prototypes to communicate with informants to improve the design. The design process included observations, interviews and participatory design of role play scenarios.

Origin of the project
     The motive of the project was from my personal experience of choosing a college. I went to a college in Japan. The overall experience was not satisfactory, unfortunately. Unlike the United States, it is not popular to change a major or transfer college in Japan. So, Japanese college students have to stick to the decisions that they made at the end of high school. Fortunately, I could go to a college in the United States, and that was quite satisfactory experience. The contrasting experiences made me understand that it was very important for high school students to choose a college that matched their personalities and interests. Having done a small research, I found that high school students in the U.S. were also under supported for their decision-making about colleges.

Initial plan
       The initial plan of this project was different from the final one although they shared the following same topic: high school students are under-supported in their decision making for college choice although quite a few of them receive academic support such as SAT preparation. The project changed significantly in March 2003, and the idea of Askplorer emerged after that change.
The initial plan of the project was to support high school students’ decision making from multiple approaches. The first was to foster their research skills to find more about their prospective colleges and future jobs. The second was to foster a user’s reflection skill to raise his/her self-awareness to be able to find better matching with a college. Especially, the second approach was emphasized in the initial plan.
I did brainstorming and decided to create an electronic portfolio with scaffolding to support a user’s reflection process. The aim of the plan was to enable the user to find his/her own interests and needs from his/her own experiences. The premise was that high school students did not integrate and make meaning of their experiences in terms of future planning, and that hindered college choice based on sound reasoning. The skill to find out one’s own needs was necessary whenever he needed to do decision making in the future.
The literature review was conducted in the following categories
  - Research on how teenagers get prepared for their futures
  - Resources that help teenagers’ preparations for their colleges and jobs
  - Portfolio theories and practices
  - Theories and practices on reflective thinking
  - Statistics about college choice

     Interviews were conducted to understand the problems, needs and learners. I talked with the following people:
  - Two school teachers who were using portfolio in their classes
  - Two non-profit organization staff members who helped students’ college         preparation
  - One counselor who was working on a college campus to prevent the students         from dropping out
  - Several high school students who were planning to go to college

     The initial plan gradually took shape, and the target users were identified. Through the research, it became apparent that high school students from low socio-economic status families were less supported in college choice, and they had more obstacles to be prepared for colleges. For example, a student who will be a first generation college student could not receive firsthand information about colleges from his/her parents. Also, because the people surrounding the student do not have an idea of colleges, the students struggle to overcome the misunderstandings of these people. Because the students from low SES are less prepared for colleges, they experience more difficulties even after they are enrolled in a college than those from average economic status families. Hence, the retention rate of the students from low SES is lower than those who are not. I identified that it was meaningful to situate the portfolio solution for students from low SES.

     In February and March, a curriculum was developed that would raise the target users’ self-awareness to be a college student. It was designed so that an electronic portfolio could be incorporated later. It was handed to the non-profit organization in East Palo Alto, CA. Although the initial project plan changed, the curriculum is still valid and supposed to be used in the summer of 2003.
The findings of the literature reviews and interviews in the initial plan remained useful even after the project changed the direction in March.

The plan changed
     In March, I found it difficult to complete the project unless it was changed. The biggest challenge of the initial plan was the difficulty to distinguish learning from counseling and knowledge management.

     The definition of learning in the Learning Design and Technology program is that “learning is change of behavior” and “learning is measurable.” There are still discussions left, but the I became a strong advocate of the definition through the course of the program. Measuring an individual’s self-awareness is a very difficult task because enhancing self-awareness is an ill-structured process. I judged that it was not going to be possible to establish a measure for self-awareness of college preparation within the limited time of the master’s project. Also, I assumed that it was going to be difficult to raise self-awareness within a limited amount of time of the learner study, such as several hours.

     Anther problem of the initial plan was a learning content. To be able to say that something is learned, it is obvious that we need a content that should be learned. A problem of portfolio is that, although portfolio might provide meta-data to support reflection on what is learned, a portfolio itself does not provide a learning content. It is basically up to a user to choose experiences and artifacts to include in a portfolio. A portfolio should be used as a supportive tool for learning, but not as a learning material. Although an electronic portfolio could be used as a part of a curriculum as a supportive tool, I then had to find an appropriate curriculum that was addressing self-awareness for college preparation, which was not easy to do. In sum, the initial learning problem and plan was good, but it was practically not feasible to complete in few months.

     In addition, there was a problem unique to me. As learning deals with human cognition, which is strongly influenced by one’s culture, it is significant for a designer to understand his users’ cultures. Especially, when it comes to a topic like self-awareness, this becomes more significant. Self-awareness cannot be considered without the background culture of a learner. As for the initial plan of the project, it was important to understand the minority issue and the communities of the target users. However, these were difficult for a designer because he was from a foreign country that did not have as big diversity issue as the United States. I realized that it was going to take longer than the master’s project period to understand the target learners and learning contents enough to develop a sophisticated solution. The lesson learned there was that a learning designer should always be aware of the distance between the learning content or the target users and himself.

New plan with brainstorming, observation and interviews
     Askplorer’s plan started with brainstorming, and soon it moved on to observation and interview phase. I visited several venues that high school students would be likely to go to in order to ask questions. The summary of the visits is following:
   - Stanford Prospective Undergraduate Tour (PUNT) (6 times)
   - Stanford Undergraduate Admissions Counseling (3 times)
   - Stanford Admissions Information Session (Once)

During the observations, I took observation notes and used them for further investigations and the prototype design. After each information session and tour, small interviews were conducted with tour guides, parents, students and admissions officers. The following is the list of the people interviewed:
   - 6 student college tour guides
   - 3 undergraduate admissions officers
   - Several prospective students and their parents

     The observations and interviews continued for 9 weeks until the second week of May. Also, I talked with counseling professionals and received their feedback about the project idea.

     During a series of the qualitative research, I found several important points to include in the Askplorer’s questioning strategies. One of the points is that prospective students should ask more specific questions. All the people who talked with prospective students mentioned this. Another point is to ask “feeling” questions to know about the current college students’ satisfaction. Multiple counselors mentioned this point.

Literature review
     In addition to the literature examined in the initial plan, further literature review was conducted. First, articles about learning and transfer were covered. This is because of the Askplorer’s aim that a user learns practical skills that he/she can actually use in a real situation. Second, books about questioning techniques were reviewed. These books were written for corporate managers, journalists and qualitative researchers who need to ask questions in their professions. Although the books were not academic articles, they suggested the wisdom of practitioners to create the Askplorer’s questioning strategies. The issue that the Askplorer’s questioning strategies are not academically grounded will be covered in “feedback and future direction” section. Third, college choice/preparation related materials were continuously examined. Such materials include Stanford Bridge Project’s report and Princeton Review’s bulletin board.

Sketching and prototyping
     The sketching phase overlapped the observation and interview phase due to the limited amount of time. The first idea sketch was done in the design journal. The second sketch was a combination of sketch and paper prototype. Most of the parts in the interface were sketched on post-its and pasted on a sketchbook where some other parts were drawn. The use of post-it was in order to make any changes easily. I showed the sketches (paper prototypes) to several people and received feedback. Those people were not end users, but it was good to receive feedback from others in the initial phase of prototyping and iteratively reflected during the development. For example, I prepared several different buttons to move back and forth between the pages. Because the people who gave feedback preferred hand shaped buttons, I decided to use them. Then the next paper prototype was created before coding the final demo version. This time, it was more like screenshots of the demo version. This prototype was shown in the review session in April and used for an informal user study. It was also used to illustrate the idea of the projects to the informants. During the sketch phase, I made sure if the technology used was realistic. To do so, small test programs were created and technical obstacles were cleared.

Video shooting and participatory design
     In the Askplorer demo, five video clips were included. The video making started on April 3rd and finished on May 14th. In this section, the design process of video making will be described. Two of the videos used participatory design: a “practice experience video” and an “expert comment video”. Participatory design is one of the user-centered design methods in which a designer designs a product “with” users. This method was used to make the “practical experience video” realistic and to include the expert’s perspective in the “expert comment video”.

     The first three videos were “sensing” video clips of the people whom prospective students could ask about colleges. They answered the questions that were created from the findings in the observation and interview phase. The following are some of the questions asked to the undergraduate admissions officer:
   - Could you explain what you do in your counseling session?
   - What do high school students ask frequently?
   - What were the best questions you ever received from students?
   - How would you help a student when he/she asks something that you don’t        know?

     In the “practical experience video”, a high school student was asking questions. These questions reflect the participant student’s own interests and the Askplorer’s questioning strategies. The scenario was created with the participant. First, I asked what she wanted to ask the interviewee and narrowed down her interests. For example, when she said that she wanted to ask about dorms, I clarified what specifically she wanted to know about dorms. Then, I applied the questioning strategies and created the scenario with a side note to advise the student. The scenario was explained thoroughly to make sure that the participant understood the strategies. For instance, the participant agreed to clearly mention her interest before asking about it so that the interviewee would give her specific information. During the video shooting, the scenario was shown to the participant behind the camera to remind the participant in case she forgot it. The whole process of scenario making and video shooting was beneficial to both the participants and me since the participant could improve her questioning skills. The participant reported that the experience was satisfactory.

     The “expert comment video” was made in the following process. First, I explained the scenario and strategies used in the “practical experience video”. Then, the “practical experience video” was shown on a computer display. The expert watched the video once and wrote down her comments. I made sure the amount of the comments was appropriate and the points of the strategies were covered. Finally, the expert comments ware videotaped. The expert watched the “practical experience video” again and paused it whenever she had a comment. I recorded the time when the video was paused. As she paused the video, she spoke her comments to a video camera. The expert made 20 comments as a whole.

User Study
     A user study was conducted informally with one graduate student at Stanford University. Due to the limited time of the development period, I decided to postpone the user study with target users of Askplorer. More formal user study should be conducted in the next cycle of the development with multiple end users. The shortcoming of the user study with a graduate student was that I could not understand whether the software was motivating for the target age learners. However, the participant provided precious firsthand insights of a user that could not be noticed from the designer’s point of view.

     The study was done on May 12th in the Center for Educational Research at Stanford (CERAS). The whole process was for thirty minutes. The participant was asked to go through the digital prototype of Askplorer without an operational instruction. The purpose of the study was to measure if the interface was intuitive and not confusing. The findings were as follows.

  - The hand-shaped buttons needed to be improved. The participant easily found      that the hands were buttons, but the active clickable areas were too small. It      took about 5 seconds for him to find an active area. This was reflected into the      final prototype.

  - “Practical experience videos” needed more description on how to post      comments. A user was supposed to click on a video screen to post a      comment, but it was not explicit. The participant mentioned that it wasn’t      difficult once he learned how to do it, but he was confused at first. Because of      this finding, I added a short instruction message and made it pop up when a      user starts the “practical experience videos”.

  - The participant suggested some changes in the use of color. For example, the      list of questioning strategies was originally written in black and red. Black lines      and red lines were written one after the other. My intention was to make it      easier to read. However, the participant thought that different colors stood for     different meanings. He mentioned that he thought red meant a question and      black meant the answer to the question. This was fixed immediately. I made all      the lines black.

Other feedback in the development phase
     I showed my prototypes and sketches to most of the people whom I met in the design process, and there was other insightful feedback. The most significant feedback was to add a function that prompts a user to write a summary of his/her own comments when the user finishes a practical experience video. By this, Askplorer becomes more active and the user’s comparison between his/her own comments and the expert’s ones become more explicit.

Feedback and Future Direction