Enhancing medical students' on-site learning experience

Medical Course Wayfinding Study

TL;DR

From lecture to practice: to prepare next generation of physicians for innovative learning experience.

Traditional lectures and conferences struggle to provide medical students with authentic hands-on emergency care experience. Recognizing this gap, Dr. Jonathan St. George of Weill Cornell Medicine developed the Protective Airway Course (PAC) learning facility to offer students practical training opportunities. It was at this juncture that our team joined the effort from a user experience perspective, further refining the hands-on learning experience to ensure students fully benefit from this innovative approach.

ROLE

Researcher & UX Strategist

(With Esther Yip, Veda Borgave, Jacqueline Bao, and Annan Yang)

DELIVERABLES

Contextual Inquiry

Cultural Probes

Affinity Graph

Field Study

Journey Map

RESULT

We provided a series of concepts and test kits for PAC course team to self produce wayfinding system.

CHALLENGE

How might we support medical students curate their learning experience in a flexible learning space?

The mission of Protected Airway Course(PAC) is effective knowledge translation in practices at students' own pace. Our task here is to uncover hidden challenges and potential opportunities to facilitate the learning experience from both perspective of students(who study the class) and organizers(who provide the class, including tutors, founders, and working staff).

PAC is such an innovative course where veryone roams, discusses and learns at their own pace and interest. In addition, it can lead to chaos, which reveals exactly why we are here :)

UNDERSTAND

Research Attempt#1: detailed walk-throughs and be a "student"

Our first research attempt was to attended course rehearsals to gain firsthand information. We tried to put ourselves in the mindset of a student taking the course for the first time, and inquired instructor and other participants to get a sense of their overall attitudes and experiences with the rehearsal.

We've peeked a slice of the UX problem:

Surgical tools, learning guidelines and practice sites are excessively stacked together in a small space, resulting in decreased student utilization of materials.


Research Attempt#2: Let medical student speak

However, our first research attempt can be largely biased (since we are not medical students, understanding the curriculum was very challenging for us!). Our knowledge gaps made it difficult to handle an effective interview. Thus, we decided to blend the research into the students' learning experience and let them speak for themselves.


We designed a variety of participatory research methods within this one-day course, focusing on individual learning objectives, mapping, feedback and suggestions, and set up our own feedback pod when the course was officially held.

We are navigating ourselves in the research by listing and sorting 'what we want to learn from students experience' - and they became research questions and activities we conducted later.

We are navigating ourselves in the research by listing and sorting 'what we want to learn from students experience' - and they became research questions and activities we conducted later.

I mapped how our research could blends with student's learning experience during each stage.

Research on live:) I enjoyed a lot talking and moving cards around

SYNTHESIS

Stand into learner's shoes

Abundant learnings and observations we received during research is a success, but also a headache. To quickly shape an overview of learning experience, we synthesized persona and journey map to voicing students' and course organizers' needs/goals and marking actions, facilities, painpoints, happy points during their journey.


(P.S.: Honestly, looking back now, I regret not dedicating more time to the “HMW” exercises and not thoroughly revisiting the user experience challenges we were trying to tackle. The journey map and research actually presented multiple strategic directions—but constrained by time, we had to move forward. What a pity!)

We mapped how our research would blends with student's learning experience during each stage.


Respark the creativity!

Countless post-its eventually drained our brains. To energize our creativity nerves for solutions, we turned to hand sketches and did few rounds of "design sprints"(Crazy 8's). Sometimes, free drawing speaks louder than sitting and analyzing!

Post-its works great for ideation, but sometimes hand sketch express better. Esther led us to passed around our sketches and added on each other's idea in Crazy 8's to synthesize concepts.

DELIVERABLES

A guided concept kits and testing plan

Due to the 2020 pandemic lockdown, we lost access to the Weill Cornell Medical College campus. Unable to prototype and test with students, we instead handcrafted some concept models and tested them at home.


Instead of providing unproven solutions, we shifted our goal to developing a action plan and concept kits enabling teams to produce design outputs themselves and evaluating their effectiveness.

Some wayfinding prototyped I made back in 2020:( I ran out my stationaries apparently.

The final concept deck with test guidance: we want to hand off something that PAC course team is ready to use once they pick up.

IMPACT

After giving our final presentation to PAC course team, this project continued forward in 2021. Feedback from PAC staff told me that the new wayfinding system has been highly successful.

English
LEARNINGS

Living in a time of change

We live in extraordinary times.


In January 2020, we embarked on this project with Dr Jonathan St. George, inspired by his dedication and passion for medical education. He shared with us the incredible efforts that he had been putting in for a learning installation for the Protected Airway Course, the first of its kind, a museum-like experience that puts students at the center. Three months later, those efforts were put on hold, as well as our research program. The resume time remained uncertain due to the pandemic.


Interestingly, I believe that research is nothing but constantly adapting to change and the unknown. We usually "feel" our own way out while learning new. Same attitude I hold towards Covid - I don't see Covid as the end of our research(or our life), I see it as “reorientation”. We will constantly adapt, learn and evolve in a different way.)