Project Creation for Daily Smirk

Features enabling more customization, like variable rating scales and notifications, demand a more intuitive user experience for instructors.

UX Design & Software Development with Maithy Le & Sean Fong

I designed and oversaw the development of the Project Creation user-flow for a instructor defined rating and feedback system.

Daily Smirk is a peer-assessment tool created by graduate student Yu Lu, for team-based projects.

Students provide feedback on the work of their peers through ratings and feedback criteria, shared with the instructor through a specialized dashboard.

How we got here…

I joined Daily Smirk in Winter 2024, tasked with designing and developing for the scaling demands of the application.

  • Originally, the Daily Smirk defaulted to a Likert scale of 1-5.

  • There was no direct interface to create courses or projects, this was all done manually through the database.

  • Our task: to allow instructors to customize ratings beyond the original 1-5 scale and preset feedback criteria.

And so, from the ground up, began a back and forward of designing for my stakeholders: Yu, Andre, for the prospective instructors who would be interested in using this new version of the Daily Smirk.

The Daily Smirk originally had no page that allowed instructors to create courses without interacting directly with the back-end. An early prototype demoed on January 31st, 2023.

Designing with Familiarity in Mind

When realizing the ordering of custom Smirks, I gravitated towards the familiar nature of social media applications and how they ordered direct-messaging and short-formed content. This design wouldn't entirely stick, but it led me down simpler paths.

Between the Design Process

A back and forward with stakeholders and developers revealed the following questions I set out to address.

  • How will we distinguish the "default set" versus an "instructor-made set"?

  • What will this look like to the user and through the database?

  • How will users be guided when creating their own Smirks?

In combination with our User Research, we were guided to the right direction when choosing to implement new features.

Answering those Questions

And so, we made it here.

  • Each section, including Smirk Configuration, contains explanatory text for the users.

  • Users are restricted from modifying the default Smirk Schemas, considering the database overhead— with the ability to create their own from these templates.

  • An "elevator style" for ordering over dragging to modify.

  • A modal that allows customization for smirks through user-upload, name-changing, etc.

Conclusion

The basic version of the Daily Smirk is currently deployed at the University of California, Irvine in the Department of Informatics. Currently used in classes ranging from Software Design to the Senior Capstone class.

Daily Smirk 2.0's development paused in April 2025, but these designs serve as a blueprint for a system intended to scale.