User experience research for the OSCAR HE application platform

“铜锣湾教育是一家慈善机构和注册公司，帮助公立学校的学生改善他们的教育过渡。这些转变包括从学校或大学到高等教育的旅程。为了做到这一点，我们使用了一个名为OSCAR的在线平台。它帮助学生探索他们的主题，发现可供他们选择的选项，并为他们的高等教育申请撰写个人陈述。自从奥斯卡最初设计以来，我们在项目中使用它的方式已经发生了显著的变化。现在，学生和老师更多地以自我指导的方式使用它。这意味着我们需要重新设计网站，让人们更容易独立使用。如果成功，我们将利用Innovate UK的资金开展一个研究项目，以更好地了解学生希望平台的外观和工作方式。我们将利用这项研究的结果来重新设计平台，但我们获得的任何资金都将只用于对我们使用的最有效的设计进行研究。我们将与使用OSCAR的学生进行两组咨询。第一组咨询将检查人们有效使用OSCAR的障碍。这将包括我们观察平台上的用户，并通过小组讨论与他们谈论他们对平台的印象。然后，我们将使用我们获得的信息来产生几个设计方案，以克服他们提出的障碍。第二轮咨询将允许学生反馈我们产生的设计解决方案，以帮助用户决定哪种解决方案对使用该平台的人最合适、最有用。这将使我们能够确保我们在重新设计平台的外观和结构时所做的选择实际上将克服人们在使用它时面临的障碍。“

"Causeway Education is a charity and a registered company which helps students at state schools improve their educational transitions. These transitions include the journey from school or college to higher education.To do this, we use an online platform called OSCAR. It helps students explore their subjects, discover the options available to them, and write their personal statements for applications to higher education.Since OSCAR was first designed, the way we use it in our programmes has changed significantly. It is now used in a much more self-guided way by students and teachers. This means we need to redesign the site to make it easier for people to use independently.If successful, we will use funding from Innovate UK to run a research project to understand better how students want the platform to look and work. We will use the results of this research to redesign the platform, but any money we are granted will only be used to conduct research into the most effective design for us to use.We will run two sets of consultations with students who use OSCAR. The first set of consultations will examine the barriers to people using OSCAR in an effective way. This will include us observing users on the platform, and also talking to them about their impressions of the platform through group discussions.We will then use the information we have gained to produce several design options to overcome the barriers they have raised. The second round of consultations will allow students to feed back on the design solutions we have produced, to help use decide which one is most appropriate and useful to the people who use the platform. This will allow us to make sure the choice we make when redesigning the way the platform looks and is structured will actually overcome the barriers people face in using it."