Is it difficult to bring a gadget to school?
– A knight is a man who is without fear and reproach
Petrov and Vasechkin
This is the story of developing a B2B solution for tablets to increase their demand in the education sector. At first, we made all possible mistakes: we considered ourselves the smartest, we got confused in the “pains” of the target audience together with the focus group. Managers, developers and, most importantly, the management liked everything. Then the pilot solution reached users and it was time for courage to realize our mistakes.
It all started with the increasing number of requests for tablet use in schools. We visited several schools to find out what kind of “pain” this interest was causing and what was preventing it from being realized. We were joined by fellow experts from IT Schools Samsungwho helped us with the research. We naively believed that we would do everything in the best possible way right away.
We sailed through a narrow strait, and in our hearts there were groans;
Scylla was on this side, Charybdis on the other…Homer. Odyssey. (Greek epic of the 8th century BC)
This article is about the final vision of the Samsung Class product, which implemented “what the target audience wanted”. And also about the functional roles of product management and developers, which are important to follow to achieve this result.
Focus on the target audience's “pain”
Only Samsung was absolutely open to dialogue
and ready to hear what is really needed in order to,
so that the product becomes educationalKonstantin Eduardovich Tkhostov
Director of Lyceum No. 369, St. Petersburg
How has a school lesson changed over the last twenty years? The children have remained the same, except that gadgets have spoiled them. And now, by law, you can’t bring them to school. At the same time, as before, a teacher solves two problems in a short time to implement a lesson plan:
1. Engagement
2. Maintaining attention
The students came from another lesson after the break and were still there in their minds or even on their smartphones, despite the formal ban. When will they come in their thoughts? in yourself here?
YouTube and TikTok bloggers have spoiled everyone with competition for seconds of attention, and now the teacher has to compete with them. Physical presence in class does not guarantee engagementThere is already a method for solving this problem – a variety of pedagogical techniques, and we decided that adding more options to it is an adequate and noble goal.
In addition, since ancient times the topic of “I can’t see well from the back desk” has remained unsolved, because there are few front desks and many students. Engaging and maintaining the attention of distant desks is objectively more difficult than that of nearby ones.
The audience needs have been defined and the most difficult part has begun: the temptation to stuff the product with trendy functionality. It's time for heroic decisions.
First, we honestly admitted to ourselves that we would not do anything about distance learning: we would do it with tablets in an offline classroom.
Then we got rid of the obsessive desire to make something like another educational app.
The hardest thing was to throw out the idea of embedding a messenger, because they are everywhere now.
So, we have defined the goal: adapt tablets for use in offline lessons. This means that Tablets should be a window of attention to the teacher. A familiar window, because children are used to gadgets. Instead of complaining about this habit, we use it in the name of pedagogical diversity. To do this, we decided to provide communication between students' and teachers' tablets using our Samsung Class app.
It is important not only to understand the target audience’s pain, but also to focus on it when creating a solution..
The simpler the better!
Developer, don't increase the “pain” of the target audience
As we reasoned further from the developers' side: no fancy clouds or additional servers. We decided that usage and deployment will be simple for an ordinary teacher. His tablet will be a controller for students' tablets with the following capabilities:
· Launch screen broadcasting to students' devices
· launch of broadcasting the content of the interactive panel to students' devices
· access to students' screens
· sending files necessary for work
· Remote and one-time launch of applications and web pages
· tracking of students' “inactivity”
· Manage access policies on all tablets
Sanitary standards dictate a minimum device size of 10.5”, so we chose the Samsung Tab A9+/S9 models as the basic option. The Flip Pro interactive panel with a diagonal of 65 to 85 inches is an optional part of the solution. Similar panels from other manufacturers are often already found in classrooms, and they can also be used to display the teacher’s tablet screen.
The teacher's tablet is used as a server. No additional infrastructure other than a Wi-Fi network is required. Automatic installation and configuration are implemented using the Knox Configure service: just create a list of serial numbers in the service account and configure remote installation of the program.
We have even provided for the option of no Wi-Fi. In this case, the teacher's tablet is used as an access point. But for mobile access points there is a limit of up to ten devices, so this option is more for mini-groups in nature.
How it looks in practice: the tablets “live” in a box with chargers in a closet, numbered and assigned to students according to their serial number in the journal. The entire lesson does not take place on the tabletbut it makes sense to use them in class. For example, at the beginning of a lesson, the teacher conducts a quick survey that allows for five minutes involve everyone who came to the lesson, while also checking the level of knowledge acquisition.
To solve the problem of including the student in the lesson, we created an additional solution option – conducting quick surveys. Alternative options can be quiz tasks on already used educational platforms or short videos. This is at the teacher's choice.
The teacher has access to control what is happening on the screen of any of the students. And can also send them an image of his screen to the interactive panel. Thus, it is transmitted to the students' devices so that the back desks can always “see”. If necessary, the teacher can reconnect the tablets, by simultaneously launching applications for everyone or opening the necessary links.
When we entered the operational space and started testing the solution in real audiences, aspects began to emerge that required additional work from the developers. Here are a few examples:
When there are many students in the class, it is inconvenient to connect the tablet via QR code every time. Therefore, it is easier to make templates with the names of the lesson, audience, a ready list of students and a selected folder for materials.
Students will want to “break” their gadgets when using them. Then we remove the taskbar and the top access panel, so that the launch of applications on the devices is controlled exclusively by the teacher, and the student has access only to the materials folder and previously launched applications.
Sometimes students log in under names other than their own. To combat incorrect authorization, we have implemented an algorithm that automatically links a student to a tablet using the correspondence between the tablet number installed in the application and the student's number in the class list.
And so on.
Was the maneuver between Scylla and Charybdis successful?
The most difficult thing was to convey the idea that Samsung Class is not an educational application like MESh, Uchi.ru or EdPad, but a “pre-installed” B2B software for education, creating a single tool from tablets. This is not an educational platform or content, but a technical part of the educational ecosystem.
According to a review by a computer science teacher at Lyceum No. 369 in St. Petersburg Vadim Borisovich Skotnikov core values of the solution:
Safety – This View students' screens from the teacher's deviceControlling what is happening on the device is part of maintaining order in the classroom.
Speed – this is the management and simultaneous launch of applications (or links) on all tablets, which allows you to avoid wasting time: “now launch the application…”
These are some of the “pains” that we covered so that gadgets would not complicate the course of the lesson.
The lyceum also found its use in ordinary software like Samsung Notes: in interaction with the school infrastructure, including cloud storage, where screenshots or pdfs were uploaded for themselves or for subsequent checking of completed assignments by the teacher.
I can't help but remind you of my previous article about the recently introduced AI features: Samsung Notes also lets you record audio and transcribe lectures.
Generally speaking, the target audience is not only comprehensive schools, but also higher education institutions. For example, small study groups or language study rooms. Samsung Class can also be used by business centers that rent out lecture halls and training rooms to make the content on the interactive panel visible to everyone in the room.
Conclusions
Product creation is like maneuvering between Scylla and Charybdis from the adventures of Odysseus. Product managers and marketing should focus on the needs of the target audience, using Occam's razor to cut off fantasies about unnecessary functionality. In turn, developers should be ready for improvements and avoid creating new “pains” for the user, choosing options for technical solutions.
If the participants in an IT project do not understand this, then either product managers or developers burn out, ultimately causing more problems than benefits to the user.
We use this understanding of functional roles within the team to help B2B customers solve their queries or find solutions for entire industries.
We understood the main needs = pains of the target audience, having understood the motivation – to expand the variety of teaching methods to engage students and keep their attention during the lesson. We gave the teacher a tablet with Samsung Class, which helps to solve this problem, in order to improve the effectiveness of training.
Successful maneuvering between Scylla and Charybdis is determined by the feedback and impressions of real users. Such is the Odyssey of creation for any product.
Pavel Medvedev
Samsung
