CritBoard: Reimagining Online WhiteBoard Tools for Diverse Personalities

Abstract

The purpose of this design thesis was to identify the challenges that design students face duringin-person critiques, particularly related to providing constructive feedback to others. The study explored how different personality traits affect the ability to give feedback and how online whiteboard tools can help students and instructors overcome these challenges. The research methods included desktop research, literature review, surveys, and interviews. The findings revealed that there are five major pain points that prevent students from giving feedback, often due to subjective concerns related to their personality traits. While online whiteboard tools can help to some extent, they do not fully solve all the challenges. As a result, this thesis project includes an online whiteboard tool specifically tailored for design students with different personalities to facilitate critiques. This tool has the potential to reduce concerns and assist instructors in facilitating critiques and monitoring student participation. This design thesis also could provide valuable insights for design education practitioners to conduct more effective critiques based on pain points caused by students’ personality traits that are identified in the research.