Shakespeare reloaded
Distinction
The works of Shakespeare are performed, adapted and taught to students in schools and universities around the world. Much is made of their artistic accomplishment, philosophical significance and ongoing relevance. How can it be that they continue to engage us and speak meaningfully to our personal and social issues after four hundred years (if indeed they do)? In this case study we considered the contemporary value and relevance of Shakespeare and how his works offer pathways into addressing all manner of concerns that are important to us.
Teachers in Australia and abroad often want fresh approaches and open-access digital resources to help them teach Shakespeare in ways that are imaginative, sophisticated and engaging. This is more challenging than it sounds because it involves understanding the contexts of school teachers and academics and then coming up with creative new possibilities that can be implemented as engaging, purposeful, feasible activities.
BACKGROUND
What contemporary value does Shakespeare have in Australia’s multicultural society within NSW secondary English curriculums?
This includes aspects of Shakespeare‘s work that are still relevant and how these features can be used to render Shakespeare education more inclusive to different modern cultures.
Driving Question
A module to be undertaken over one term in Stage 5.
Inspired by the study of various cross-cultural Shakespeare adaptations, students will be encouraged to adapt a Shakespeare play in light of their own cultural perspectives.
They will share their work on a digital platform where they can learn about their peers’ cultures.
Project Proposal
Persona 1
English Teacher
Persona 2
Senior School English Student
Our target audience for this project was NSW secondary teachers and our target users are senior secondary students. These two persona’s reflect the people who will interact with the proposed design solution, and will be considered when designing and testing the product .
Sitemap
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
USER TESTING Wireframes
Using tasks for user testing wireframes is effective because it lets me see how users interact with the design in real scenarios. By giving them specific tasks, I can identify usability issues, understand their thought processes, and gather feedback to improve the wireframe before further development. This ensures the final product meets user needs and expectations. This user journey map is based off the results from the user testing tasks, emphasising what has worked but more importantly areas of improvement as seen in the ‘pain points’ section. It summaries the overall user journey interacting with Shakespeare Unity.
User Journey Map
(1) Sign up to Shakespeare Unity. (2) Upload a new post. (3) View the recently added posts.
Mood Board
And UI Elements
Creating a kid-friendly Shakespeare website involves key design choices. Interactive button states enhance engagement and navigation, while the colour green adds a fresh, welcoming aesthetic. The heading font and logo introduce playfulness, while being reminiscent of old english cursive. Capturing the imagination and making the site both educational and fun for young users is a priority made evident with the use of simple block colours and cartoon characters. These elements aim for an engaging and experience.
ITERATIVE DESIGN PROCESS
Design solutions
Simplifying the ‘New Post’ form - student input
The first key issue that users experienced in the wireframes was repetition of basic personal information in the upload new form. It seemed redundant after just logging in with that same information. To eliminate this issue, the users first and last name will appear filled out, and an edit option will be available.
NEW: Users enquired about group projects and collaboration when submitting a post, so a feature to add multiple names to the project has been added to credit all participants who contributed to the production of the play.
Simplifying the ‘New Post’ form - teacher input
Students eager to submit their work and get back to more important things like socialising or chatting to their friends ;) were impatient waiting for their teacher to input their information. Similarly the teachers themselves found it taxing re-entering so much information in for each student (or group of students).
NEW: All teachers need to verify the students submission is their first and last name, their profile username and their unique confirmation code.
Navigating to explore new posts
After a student submits their post the website will automatically re-direct itself to the dashboard page, where all the most recently added posts will be located. This design emulates the scrolling feature found in popular applications like TikTok and Instagram. This approach is particularly effective because our target audience is highly familiar with and adept at using these platforms.
When the user sees their post up with all their other peers work in the ‘recently added’, it innately confirms their submission has been successful.
