Hasta La Ideas

With the promise of a single tool that can replace the pen, paper and repetitive inventories of books at schools, a multimedia eReader tablet provides a multipurpose educational tool that not only lets the student read and write, but can also go one step further and engage the student directly, replacing sometimes dull and lifeless teaching methods that can marginalize students with different learning styles and habits.

While the western world has been talking about introducing better educational tools for years, schools elsewhere across the globe have taken a major step toward incorporating tablets into their curriculum. A recent report from Pyramid Research shows tablet sales are set to skyrocket as South Korea vows to move to an all-tablet education curriculum by 2015. India and Thailand are close behind. Educators are looking for improved methods to prepare students for admission into professional college programs like engineering, medicine and business management.

In 2010 Luminum InfoTek approached Lumium (although our names are similar there is no connection). Their vision was to create and introduce a handheld wireless electronic device for students with age- and skill-appropriate learning content. Out of this came the Tuto eReader. “Tuto” is a shortened version of the word “Tutor”, because with Tuto, the hope is that students would be able to teach themselves.

As a vertically integrated design and engineering firm, our job was to design not only the hardware components of the learning device and how it would look and feel, but also the embedded software design and learning materials for the device, which would meet the needs of students and educators.

Bringing the Tuto to schools: Steps and Challenges

While many customers can be stringent with their product requirements, Luminum InfoTek empowered the Lumium team to stay flexible with the eReader components, allowing us to experiment with different strategies and designs that would best fit the target demographic while including basic tablet functionality (Wi-Fi, audio speakers, and Bluetooth connectivity). Our overarching principles were reliability, durability, patentability, time-to-market and cost.

We needed a platform we could modify over time as student, teacher and syllabus requirements changed, but we also needed to build a closed control program to run on top of the device OS. This was important not just to protect the integrity of the content and capabilities but also so Luminium InfoTek could offer customized branding and custom-control for individual user password access, for each school offering the Tuto to students.

User Research

In total we spoke with 500 students in grades 9-11 in Ahmedabad, India. The students and teachers researched came from diverse economic and social backgrounds. Given the diversity of India, in terms of religion, culture, language and economic means, we were able to gather a good range of emotions from all users. The influencing factors for each group impacted what they saw as the primary need for this device. Their exposure to and actual use of small, smart digital devices varied, as did familiarity of such devices by the teachers who also needed to understand and interface with the Tuto device.

Students interact with a Foam Prototype

Lumium’s engineers and designers traveled with and observed students throughout the entire school day—from their homes, to school, to their after-school coaching classes and back home in the evening. We were looking for patterns in the way students approached their daily learning; everything from studying for exams to assignment execution, personal organization and methods for planning ahead. What times do students typically sit down to study (if at all)? How long do students stay working on a particular assignment until they move to the next one? What is the preferred method of learning for each student?

Once we had the human and technological demands in mind, we began sketching, building off a basic underlay of hardware framework provided by our engineers. Because the client was flexible when it came to certain aspects of their hardware; for example, there were no strict requirements for LCD screen size, we had the ability to pivot to alternate designs based on peoples’ reaction to several rounds of sketches and detailed renderings.

To determine which model was most aesthetically pleasing and functional we took handcrafted foam prototypes of our top 5 device designs out to a number of middle schools. Not surprisingly perhaps, students wanted the largest screen size possible. Thus, our engineers went with a slide-screen design with a tucked away keyboard concealed underneath.

Six foam prototypes

With our hardware designers working on the look and feel of the eReader, our software engineers worked on the graphical user interface (GUI) that is customized around modern e Learning practices. The student can browse any chapter and page like any other e-book and for that the UI follows a typical structure. But, studying against plain reading is a non-linear activity; and our UI centric research showed that students often go to the portions they have highlighted in the text, they often go to the last-read page, they often go directly to the Q&A section or to the problems and solutions, and they have timetables of school and their own schedule for studying. The features that facilitate the above are all placed for immediate access at any time while browsing.

Reflecting this work and studying behavior, the device has touch pads on right and left side of the screen, which when tapped, will allow immediate access to Q&A, highlighted portions, animations, schedules. This eliminates the need for the student to go to the main menu repeatedly in order to access the data in various scenarios.

Click for full-sized image.

Not only can students create their own task lists; the Tuto is also designed to assist in creating to-do lists based on the student’s progress with the embedded coursework. Once they finish their required reading on the device for the day, Tuto will sound an alarm prompting them to take action on corresponding assignments and homework. In effect, each student would get a personalized plan for studying and completing assignments in a timely fashion The schedule function built in the UI also allows parents to set study reminders for their children, taking the screen to the chapter and page that is scheduled to be studied at that time.

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