Web App Design
Created a human-centered video platform to reduce cognitive load and social fatigue, helping students and teachers thrive in virtual classrooms during COVID.
SCHOOL
MIT
DURATION
4 Months
TEAM
Graduate School Classmates
TOOLS
Figma, FigJam
OVERVIEW
During COVID, platforms like Zoom and Teams became the backbone of K–12 education — but they weren’t designed with children in mind. Students experienced Zoom fatigue, constant self-view, and increased cognitive load, while teachers struggled to maintain engagement, monitor attention, and manage hybrid classrooms.
Avagab is a video learning platform we designed at MIT to make online school healthier, more engaging, and more human — bringing together human-systems engineering, UX design, and sociotechnical thinking.
As a four-person team, we collaborated across UX research, product strategy, concept development, human factors analysis, system mapping, and interaction design to bring Avagab from insight to prototype. This work was completed as the final project for MIT’s 16.400 — Human Systems Engineering course.
PROBLEM
We recognized that virtual classrooms were draining both students and teachers, but before moving into design, we analyzed the deeper issues shaping the online learning experience during COVID.
Key challenges:
Zoom fatigue from extended eye contact & constant self-view
Cognitive overload from managing windows, chat, and camera presence
Reduced attention & retention during long virtual blocks
Lack of natural social interaction and difficulty reading engagement
Hybrid learning strain for teachers juggling in-room and online students
Existing tools failed because:
They were built for corporate meetings, not learning.
They lacked fatigue-reducing features (break prompts, movement support).
They offered no meaningful engagement analytics.
They didn’t support healthy ergonomics or classroom dynamics
To ground our solution in real classroom behaviors, we synthesized insights from informal conversations with middle- and high-school students and teachers within our team’s networks, along with human-systems research on cognitive load, attention, and virtual learning patterns during COVID. These inputs helped us shape four representative personas that highlight the needs, frustrations, and motivations of both students and educators in online and hybrid environments.
Shared needs across personas:
Reduce cognitive load
Enable natural participation
Improve ergonomics and pacing
Provide clarity in hybrid environments
Reduce pressure and self-consciousness
SOLUTION
Avagab — a healthier, more human video classroom
A platform designed with cognition, ergonomics, and attention science in mind.
Avatar-Based Presence - Students appear as animated avatars instead of live self-view until they speak.
Engagement Analytics - Live insights on participation, attention, and speaking time.
Adaptive Break Recommendations - System prompts instructors when attention dips — based on human-factors principles.
Gamified Learning Activities - Built-in templates like Jeopardy-style quizzes to break monotony.
Hybrid-Ready - Remote students stay visible & included through adaptive spotlighting.
Key Features
Real-Time Avatars
Avagab replaces live self-view with customizable avatars that activate only when a student speaks. This reduces self-focused attention, performance pressure, and the social fatigue that often accompanies continuous camera use.
Why Avatars Matter
Research shows that constant self-view increases anxiety, cognitive load, and unnecessary self-monitoring. Students often pay more attention to their own video tile than to lesson content. By shifting focus away from the camera, Avagab reduces:
Eye-contact pressure
Social judgment fatigue
Camera anxiety
Cognitive switching cost
Engagement Analytics
Avagab provides teachers with real-time insights into class participation, speaking time, attention trends, and interaction levels. These lightweight signals help teachers understand when students are engaged, when they might be struggling, and when pacing adjustments may be needed.
Adaptive Break Prompts
Using human-factors principles, Avagab detects drops in collective attention and suggests timely stretch breaks or micro-pauses. This helps maintain healthier pacing, reduces cognitive fatigue, and encourages natural movement during long virtual blocks.
Gamified Learning Activities
Built-in templates — such as Jeopardy-style quizzes, polls, timers, and collaborative mini-games — transform passive listening into active participation. These tools give teachers simple ways to vary instruction, increase energy, and keep students engaged.
PROTOTYPE
Student Experience
Avagab gives students a calmer, less stressful way to participate in online class. Instead of constantly seeing themselves on camera, students join sessions through a customizable avatar that activates only when they speak — reducing pressure and self-consciousness. They can focus on the lesson, participate in activities like Jeopardy-style quizzes, and discreetly use a “BRB” mode when they need a moment away from the screen. After class, each student can review simple participation insights to understand their engagement patterns in a supportive, non-punitive way.
Teacher Experience
For teachers, Avagab simplifies the logistics of online and hybrid instruction. They can upload and sequence lesson materials, monitor real-time engagement signals such as attention dips and speaking time, and receive adaptive break suggestions based on class fatigue. During class, avatars make it easier to see who is participating, and after class, teachers get actionable analytics on attendance, participation, and attention trends — helping them tailor instruction and support students more effectively.
SYSTEM DESIGN & HUMAN FACTORS
Avagab was built with core HSE principles:
Cognitive Load - Reducing visual clutter, self-view, and constant social vigilance.
Perception & Attention - Using salience, prominence, and pacing to guide focus.
Ergonomics - Timed break interventions and freedom to move without shame.
Mental Models - Consistent UI layout modeled after familiar classroom workflows.
Usability Variables (Wickens) - Learnability, Efficiency, Memorability, Error Prevention, Satisfaction
REFLECTIONS & KEY LEARNINGS
Building Avagab strengthened my ability to apply human-factors frameworks to real product problems, design with cognition and ergonomics in mind, and translate academic research into actionable UX decisions. It pushed me to prototype a complex video learning system, bridge engineering psychology with user experience, and collaborate across disciplines to create a cohesive sociotechnical solution. This project ultimately shaped how I approach large-scale enterprise experiences at Dell and Hilton—where I continued designing products that support human performance at scale.