Competency Curriculum Dashboard
How might we…
create a tool that reinforces the competency-based curriculum and engages medical students in understanding and tracking their progress over time?
Navigating a New System
We want medical students to feel less anxious about their performance on WashU’s new competency curriculum.
OVERVIEW
The MD program at Washington University was fully renewed starting in the fall of 2020 with a competency-based design. Program objectives (competencies) are clearly defined and the assessment of student learning is organized around demonstrated attainment of these competencies. The MD program team developed an early prototype of a competency portfolio to help visualize student progress. As part of WashU’s Spring 2021 Interaction Design Class, this project aimed to use the tools of interaction design to iterate on the team’s initial findings.
PROJECT OUTPUTS
Wireframes of research-based proposal for student progress visualizations
TIMEFRAME
March 2021 - May 2021
(3 months)
PARTNER
Carolyn Dufault - Assistant Dean for Education and Technology at Washington University Medical School
TEAM
Annemarie Spitz - Interaction Design Spring 2021 Professor
Caroline Chang, Erin Noah, Jane Gormley, and Miles Lee - Student Team
My Roles
As the only researcher on a team of designers, I led our user interviews and testing sessions. In addition to facilitating research with users, I helped guide my team through the process while learning communication design skills from them.
Design Journey
My team and I used interaction design methods to develop mid-fidelity wireframes to present to our partner.
Narrowing the Scope
After conducting secondary research and user interviews with both WashU Medical School staff and students, we developed a narrower scope for the project focused on three main questions.
Incorporating User Feedback
As we moved through three rounds of prototyping and two rounds of testing, we incorporated insights from users into our design decisions.
Final Wireframes
The wireframes we developed in this project will be used to inspire future work on the competency curriculum team.
Testimony
“Jane brought an air of professionalism to this project. She took it seriously and was willing to put in the work to make it happen.”
- Team member feedback
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