Design Project
App Design: Interactive Audio-Visual Experience for University Educators
Project Detail
UQAM classrooms are equipped with an application for managing display content during lectures, as well as camera and audio settings for remote students. All of these parameters are controlled through a touchscreen application located near the instructor's desk.
The existing application made it nearly impossible for professors to operate independently. The interface lacked clear affordances, used technical jargon unfamiliar to instructors, and organized controls according to the system's architecture rather than the instructor's workflow. The result: a constant stream of IT support calls, interrupted lectures, and frustrated faculty.
The university's IT team reached out to me to improve the application's usability and clarity, with the goal of enabling professors to manage their classroom technology autonomously during class.
CLIENT
UQAM | Université du Québec à Montréal
PROJECT
Redesign of a Classroom AV Control Application
ROLE
Lead UX Designer
UX Research
During the research phase, I met with the team to gain a clear understanding of the users' challenges. Throughout this project, I conducted several activities aimed at building a solid picture of the user profile, their core tasks, and the current market landscape.
Classroom observation
I observed users in real conditions — during pre-class setup, mid-session adjustments, and transitions between activities. I documented hesitation points, error recovery behaviours, and workarounds instructors had developed to compensate for the interface's shortcomings.
App audit
I systematically walked through every screen of the existing application, documenting flow gaps, missing feedback states, inconsistent terminology, and layout issues. An annotated audit document was produced and presented to the full team to align everyone around the findings.
Competitive evaluation
I benchmarked 4 comparable AV control systems used in higher education institutions — Extron, Crestron, AMX, and Mersive. This allowed me to identify industry conventions and interaction patterns worth adopting in the redesign.
Design Iteration
During the design phase, I began with wireframes to focus the conversation on navigation before committing to any visual direction. The goal was to surface the right information at the right moment, for example, showing what is currently on or off, and making options like "close screen" or "mute audio" immediately accessible. When a user needed to adjust the settings of a specific screen, only the relevant controls were shown in context.
The final interface presents only what instructors need, organized around their actual workflow. System status is always visible, all labels use room-oriented language, and advanced options are progressively disclosed through a secondary panel.
Navigation is structured around the physical room context rather than technical identifiers. The active state is always visible. The most common action — "show on all screens" — is the primary button. Audio controls are surfaced inline, without requiring a separate screen.
Hight Fidelity Mockup
Conclusion
After the application was deployed, UQAM's IT department reported a significant reduction in classroom-related support calls. Instructors who had previously required assistance for basic setup were now completing their sessions independently from their very first use of the new interface.
The redesign considerably reduced the learning curve for faculty and eliminated the need for frequent technical support, creating a smoother, more autonomous teaching experience in technology-enhanced classrooms.