What’s in a name?

At the beginning of every school year, countless teachers must remember names for their new students. Not only is this for safety (think wrangling Kindergarteners), but also to make connections. I wanted to create a tool to help teachers remember their student’s names as quickly, easily, and as accurately as possible.

Research

My first goal was to learn about the challenge of remembering large number of students' names from the perspective of teachers, and gain a strong sense of the teacher’s goals, mindset, and pain points. I did this by running two interviews - one with a 5th grade teacher, and another with a K-8 school principal. I supplemented these interviews by reading blogs and forums on the topic. These two research methods allowed me to paint a picture of the world of teachers and the challenge of remembering student names.

I also found that a significant number of schools use software called Student Info System (SIS), which allows schools to manage information about their students. For example, an administrator will update the system over the summer to define which specific students a teacher will have in their class. The teacher can log into their SIS account and see who's in their class in the upcoming school year - and also see the faces of students and their names.

Learning about memory. I also researched memory and the human brain, specifically looking into why people forget names and ways to improve their memory. I found that our brains don’t remember different types of information equally well (double negative, I know - eep).

Names are difficult to remember because they are often random words that don’t have meaning. "Master Memorizers," those who can memorize huge quantities of random data (for example, they could memorize the first and last names of dozens of strangers in a few minutes), use a trick of creating a visual association between the random name and a vivid scene in their imaginations. The incredible surprise I learned was that these Master Memorizers are not memorizing geniuses - but "average-memory" people who have learned how to train their brains to recall vast quantities of random information.

This is based of the “Baker/baker” paradox, where you “translate” a seemingly meaningless name into something with vivid interest. For example, it’s hard to remember the name Baker. It’s easier to remember people who are a bakers, because you can visualize them with a big white hat, and flour all over their hands. The more vivid, unique, and strange the scene, the more memorable it is.

Persona Creation

I wanted to define my target audience, so I created a target persona based on my interviews and research. Meet Miss Stephanie Ching.  

Brainstorming Scenarios

I identified various scenarios that a teacher would face, to help me think about the problem holistically. Ultimately, I narrowed to solve for the following scenario:

For this upcoming school year, Miss Ching wants to quickly impress the students and the principal by being able to greet students by their name, from memory, when she first meets them on the 1st day of school. She only has one day to memorize the names and faces.

Storyboard

This step gave me a better sense of what Miss Ching would see, think, and do as the 1st day of school approaches, and how she wants to learn her students' names.

The Concept

Problem:

• Being able to quickly remember a student's name is important to a teacher because it promotes and encourages positive relationships being built between the student and teachers. It's also a function of safety, as it's much easier to get the attention of students by shouting their name, instead of yelling, "Hey! You!" and physically running after them.

• Remembering names is difficult because names are generally random and meaningless. Human brains are wired to remember scenes, scenarios, and events, not random facts.

• The goal is to help teachers like Miss Ching remember the names and faces of their students within one day without having to ever meet the students.

Solution: Make it easy for teachers to remember their students' names by "translating" a name into something meaningful - a "Name Scene." For example, instead of Mr. Baker, remember a person as a baker who makes the best baguette in California.

• The app automatically pulls the names and photos of the students, because it syncs with the school's ERP software, Student Information System (SIS).

• So when the teacher logs into the app using her SIS credentials, her class is automatically populated.

• They can then quickly start "translating" their students' names into vivid scenes.

• When the teacher writes the scene, the app will automatically generate an image that represents the scene. This makes the name memorable, and more likely to be quickly remembered by the teacher.

• The app makes it easy for the teacher to quickly review imagery and associate that with the student's face, to trigger the recollection of the name.

• The primary function of the app is to help learn the student's first name, but it also allows the teacher to include the last name as an option.

Sketches

To simplify and narrow the solution, I decided to solve for the minimal viable product (MVP), and narrowly focus on helping Miss Ching create the name scenes.

IA and Flow Diagram

These two tools helped me visualize the app’s hierarchy, and the details of Miss Ching's options and paths she can take.

Paper Wireframes

Because wireframes are a tool to help communicate the idea of the concept, I didn’t force the designs to align exactly to the Material Design guidelines. I gave myself leeway, because I wanted to focus on the experience during this step - though, I kept Material Design in mind. 

Digital Wireframes

Login experience

I started by referencing the iterated paper sketches, then moving to digitizing it. Digitizing the wireframes helped me identify interaction and experience details.

Wizard experience

Writing a scene experience

All students experience

Visual design

I created a visual design of what it’d look like when Miss Ching looks at the overview of her students, in card view. In this scene, she’s looking at Edward’s scene, which was based off the description she wrote for him:

Name: Edward Bedford

Name scene: Edward Scissorhands fords a river on a bed

Closing thoughts

If I were to take this exercise further, I'd experiment with incorporating GenAI to create the scenes for the teachers. Perhaps even animate them to make it more memorable. That’d take the work off the teacher to create the scenes.

In terms of additional functionality, I’d test incorporating a quiz that would help teachers test their knowledge. I'd also explore allowing the teacher to import students from other classes, since teachers often interact with students outside of their particular “homeroom.”

My next goal is to build this app using GenAI and other AI tools out in the wilderness!