Challenge B Videos

Authors: Taha Fareed & Michael Donkers

Project Title: Understanding the Mind (Educational Video Series)
Subtitle
Last Updated: October 23rd 2025
Authors: Taha Fareed, Michael Donkers

Brief Project Overview.

We created concise educational videos on procrastination and memory specifically aimed towards 16 – 25 year olds around the high school to university age group. We chose this topic because so many students, including us, struggle with our procrastination and study skills. We believe that turning these boring and complicated topics on memory and psychology can make the topic much more interesting and can actually benefit the viewers. Our main goal is to make the psychology behind study habits accessible and entertaining for audiences around 15 to 25 years old

THE PROCESS
Understand (Discover, Interpret, Specify)
DESCRIBE THE CHALLENGE:

Students, especially students in high school and university, have an issue with procrastination and memory. Often these students will procrastinate their work and then fail to forget the information when a test comes up because they didn’t effectively transfer their memories into long term memories. We want to help students in this situation by creating short and educational videos to help them understand themselves better and better their education

CONTEXT AND AUDIENCE

We are addressing high-school and university students aged 16–25 who constantly find themselves working around deadlines, multitasking, and stress. Most find that they are bogged down by procrastination or ineffective study habits.
Typical learner: A learner seeking to know why they procrastinate and improve their ability to focus.
Extreme learner: A chronic procrastinator or anxious learner who feels guilty and overwhelmed.
Motives are better grades, stress less, and self-awareness. Videos will have simple visuals and language to reduce extraneous cognitive load and maintain learners’ interest in spite of short attention span

STATEMENT OF POINT OF VIEW

Procrastinating students need to understand the psychological and neuroscientific accounts of procrastination so that they can apply effective memory-based strategies to improve concentration and productivity.

Learning Objectives:

We want our audience to be able to:
1.Explain why procrastination takes place from a cognitive psychology perspective.

2.Explain the three stages of how memory works (encoding, storage, retrieval).

3.Apply two or more strategies to break procrastination based on memory and motivation principles.

Plan (Ideate, Sketch, Elaborate)
IDEATION:
We began ideating around a core concept: “Everyday Psychology in One Minute.” We dreamed up ways that we could take complex cognitive science and distill it into short, easy-to-connect-with lessons that would instruct students about their own habits and behaviors. In ideation, we kicked around concepts such as motivation, attention, sleep, and emotion regulation, but settled on these three videos:
● Why We Procrastinate: gaining insight into the psychological battle between fear and logic.

● The How Memory Works (in 3 Steps): simplifying the encoding, storage, and retrieval model.

● Three Tips to Defeat Procrastination: applying theory as practical behaviour-change tools.
All the videos will be shorter than one minute, crafted for mobile consumption and cognitive efficiency. We made use of digital sticky notes in Canva and hand drawings to organize flow, visual tone, and learner takeaways. All the ideas will be of the “problem → explanation → action” structure in order to maintain the audience engaged and content.

STORYBOARD/SCRIPT

Video 1: Why We Procrastinate
● Scene 1: Student at desk, empty paper, clock ticking. Narration: “You mean to start, but somehow you don’t. It is not laziness, it is your brain stopping you.”

● Scene 2: Animation of the brain where amygdala (fear) overrides prefrontal cortex (reason). Narration: “There are two systems competing within your brain… “

● Scene 3: Student writes a letter, colours change symbolizing calm concentration. Narration: “One easy action means safety and quiets the alarm system.”

● Scene 4: Progress bar filling as the student continues to type. Narration: “Action comes before motivation. Once you begin, your brain will catch up.”

Video 2: How Memory Works in Three Steps
● Scene 1: Brain as factory conveyor belt. Narration: “Memory is not an event, it’s a process. Every idea follows three steps: encoding, storage, retrieval.”

● Scene 2: Employee stamping boxes as information is fed into system. Narration: “Step 1: Encoding. Your senses label new information. The more meaning you give, the stronger the label.”

● Scene 3: Boxes placed on short-term and long-term shelves. Narration: “Step 2: Storage. Important information is fed into long term memory, while idle details fade away.”

● Scene 4: Flashlight sweeps the shelves and knocks one marked box down. Narration: “Step 3: Retrieval. Each time you recall a memory, the path becomes stronger, like a muscle that becomes more powerful with exercise.”

● Scene 5: Shelves light up as knowledge flows once more. Narration: “To remember better, connect ideas, rehearse soon, and rehearse recall frequently.”

Video 3: Three Ways to Beat Procrastination
● Scene 1: phone on one side and half starting homework on the other. Narration: “You can’t stop procrastination, but you can trick it. Here’s how.”

● Scene 2: Massive task is divided into tiny pieces on screen. Narration: “Step 1: Make the task smaller. Overwhelming goals overwhelm the brain.”

● Scene 3: Phone stashed away, five-minute timer. Narration: “Step 2: Remove distractions and promise yourself just 30 focused minutes (pomodoro Technique).”

● Scene 4: Progress bar reaches 100 % and check mark appears. Narration: “Step 3: Reward progress. Celebrate completion. Positively reward your behaviour”

● Scene 5: Student at ease and pleased; text reads “Start now.” Narration: “Momentum doesn’t come before action, it comes because of it.”

Principles Applied

Each prototype is guided by research-supported Educational Multimedia Design Principles (Mayer, 2009):
● Coherence Principle: Redundant text and images are removed to minimize unnecessary cognitive load.

● Signaling Principle: Key text sentences (“Action beats anxiety,” “Review within 24 hours”) are made with the use of text

● Segmenting Principle: Content is broken into bite-sized steps per video.

● Modality Principle: Audio narration accompanies on-screen content instead of repeating on-screen text.

● Personalization Principle: Familiar tone (“you,” “your brain”) is utilized to connect with learners.● Dual Coding Theory (Paivio, 1971): Visual metaphors (brain, factory, progress bar) reinforce memory traces.
Production Tools: Canva Video Editor (layout & animation), CapCut (timing & audio mix), Adobe Express (captions).
Accessibility: Subtitles and high-contrast text for readability across all videos.
Colour Scheme: Soft blues + warm corals to convey calm and motivation.

Video One (Why We Procrastinate) – Michael

Video Two (How Memory Works) – Taha

Video Three (How To Beat Procrastination) – Taha

Peer Feedback Summary

The response we got to our Understanding the Mind prototype was largely positive, and it was great to hear since we had put so much effort into it. Feedback received showed us that the project was innovative, concise, and simple. They liked how the visuals we used, the narrative, and our structure all came together to ensure that the ideas we were experimenting with became more engaging and understandable. Some people had indicated to us that generally the flow was smooth and that the conversational tone helped to make the content relatable and easy to understand. In all of the reviews we received there was reference to the fact that our visuals were aligned with Mayer’s principles of Coherence, Contiguity, and Segmenting.

It was also reported that the story based on the Personalization principle assisted in keeping the psychology topics simpler. The breakdown of the material into three sections, Why We Procrastinate, How Memory Works, and Three Ways to Beat Procrastination, was also discovered to be contributing to making the material appear organized and meaningful to the readers. Much of what we received as feedback was related to finer details and thus we did take that to heart on our final submission. We were suggested that we incorporate bolder visual cues like emphasized keywords or small icons in order to help bring attention to our key points.

We were also told that incorporating short captions or clearer transitions between sections would help to make the videos feel even more cohesive to our theme. Overall, feedback we got described our prototype as being engaging, well-balanced, and constructed with some consideration, with merely a few tweaks needed in order to tighten up the flow.

Team Reflection

Overall, as a team, we were pleased with how our Understanding the Mind videos turned out.
We felt that it did an adequate job of exploring some relatively abstract concepts of psychology and presenting them in a way that made sense to all different kinds of learners.
Each video flowed quite naturally from the last and into the next, starting out with why we procrastinate, followed by how memory works, and then introducing strategies to improve. The feedback we received ensured us that our imagery which we used, our pace, and the chatty tone narration all came together to make the material very captivating and easy to understand for whomever was watching. It was pleasing to see that our use of Mayer’s (2009) Coherence, Segmenting, and Personalization principles came through in the end solution and indeed delivered what we were trying to depict. If we were to make any final revisions based upon what we now know, we’d concentrate on increasing signaling and transitions. Our friends pointed out that even though the flow itself was unbroken, more powerful visual cues, like bolded words, icons, or quick on-screen suggestions, would help direct attention to the essential concepts we were trying to get across.

We also discussed the ways in which using subtle differences in color or rhythm would further clarify transitions between sections to the audience. These changes would help the viewer’s eye and be more in compliance with Mayer’s Signaling Principle that we were trying to cooperate with. In the final version, we added captions to support key concepts and allow the videos to be more user-friendly for different learning styles so that it’s accessible to everyone. We also made the transitions between the pieces of the videos more distinct by adding uniform color schemes or title cards along the way throughout the videos. These adjustments should make the experience of learning overall smoother and more unified to our users. Most of the feedback that we were given made us think about a lot more with regard to accessibility and cognitive load for our viewers.