From UX to Instructional Design: Supporting Rural Teachers in Transforming Students’ Reading Interests Into Academic Success

Article Sidebar

PDF
Published: Jul 12, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14434/ijdl.v14i2.34837
Keywords:
user experience design, instructional design, design thinking, rural education, professional development
Issue
Section
Design Cases
Need a more accessible version of this PDF?
Contact us

Main Article Content

Zixi Li
University of Michigan
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1004-8967
Xiaoqian Niu
University of Michigan
Botao Lu
University of Michigan
Vincent Qiu
University of Michigan
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4255-0118
Ying-Chen Huang
University of Michigan

Abstract

This design case records a design competition project in which the team adapted various user experience (UX) design methodologies to instructional design in support of China’s K-6 rural school teachers for the increasingly challenging teaching requirements on reading literacy. The solution landed on a mobile application design, YoungRead. The project is the winner of the University of Michigan Learning Levers Development Award and the Zell Lurie Institute Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award in 2020. This design case will describe the design process and how the adapted UX design model may be used in similar instructional design situations to facilitate under-resourced teachers in developing professional skills to bridge students’ reading interests and academic achievement.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC

Article Details

How to Cite
Li, Z., Niu, X., Lu, B., Qiu, V., & Huang, Y.-C. (2023). From UX to Instructional Design: Supporting Rural Teachers in Transforming Students’ Reading Interests Into Academic Success. International Journal of Designs for Learning, 14(2), 58–71. https://doi.org/10.14434/ijdl.v14i2.34837
Author Biographies

Zixi Li, University of Michigan

Zixi Li is a doctoral student of the Instructional Systems Technology Department, Indiana University, Bloomington. She holds her B.A. (University of Washington) in Communication and B.S. (University of Michigan) in Science of Information. Her research interests include self-directed learning, self-directed professional development, online language learning, open education, and instructional design practice

Xiaoqian Niu, University of Michigan

Xiaoqian Niu studied user research in the master’s program at the School of Information, University of Michigan. After graduation, she started her career as a product manager. With a passion for building tools to guide users to protect themselves online, now she works at Bytedance in Beijing, focusing on developing user-facing search safety features and internal risk detection tools for TikTok.

Botao Lu, University of Michigan

Botao Lu graduated from the University of Michigan, and currently works as UX Designer at MathWorks with a background in Journalism and Information Science. He enjoys working in multidisciplinary environment and believes diversity could drive innovation.

Vincent Qiu, University of Michigan

Vincent Qiu is a design, technology, and innovation consultant working in digital transformation and futurist strategy. He holds master’s degrees in design science and information science from the University of Michigan, and his research interests include human-centered design, choice architecture, behavioral economics, and human-computer interaction.

Ying-Chen Huang, University of Michigan

Ying-Chen Huang graduated from University of Michigan, receiving her Masters’ degree in Design & Technologies for Learning. Now, she is a trainee director in a school in Los Angeles, she not only leads global online courses but also designs learning materials and assessments for online and on-site classes. Before coming to The United States, she obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Language Education and was an Elementary School Teacher in Taiwan. Her teaching philosophy is “Learn from the games”, exploring rules and surprises through games and integrating them into daily life.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Copyright © 2026 by the International Journal of Designs for Learning, a publication of the Association of Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), published by Indiana University Libraries Journals. Permission to make digital or hard copies of portions of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee, provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page in print or the first screen in digital media. Except as otherwise noted, the content published by IJDL is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. A simpler version of this statement is available here.