Redesign
Redesigning Chegg to be good
We redesigned Chegg based on the three ethical issues that we mentioned previously:
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Interfaces mislead and frustrate users
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Profit based model with unreliable answers
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Facilitates cheating not learning
​Redesign Overview
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Interfaces mislead & frustrate users
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To address this problem, we removed the subscription business model and provided precise detail of the service fee usage on the Chegg homepage(See the modal on the left). In the new design, students will pay for the Chegg service quarterly/semesterly. According to our research, most of our students only use Chegg for certain classes that they take for a quarter or a semester. They usually forget to cancel the
subscription during the summer, the time period that they don't use Chegg at all. By changing the subscription model and being transparent for the money usage, we will be able to prevent the frustration of forgetting to cancel the subscription and moving away from the profit-based model. It's a better design with the consideration of Libertarianism, since we are trying our best to be transparent and let the users decide whether or not to use(or continue) using our service.
Profit based model with
unreliable answers
Chegg currently charges money for their answers that many times are incorrect. The answers are given by people who sign up to be tutors and are not checked for accuracy. Our redesign has Chegg check to make sure the expert answer is 100% correct instead of asking students to rate the answer for accuracy. This model has community professionals answer questions in their field to hopefully improve the accuracy of questions. In our research, students said that it's frustrating to pay for a service that doesn't actually provide the service they say they do. This redesign falls under a libertarian ethical consideration it fixes the broken contract that users originally entered.
Facilitates Cheating Not Learning
One of the most unethical problems with Chegg is that students use Chegg to finish a last-minute homework assignment and are not trying to learn and Chegg supplies the answers for them with no effort to help them learn. Our redesign tackles this issue through:
Step-by-step walkthroughs
We added step-by-step walkthroughs where students have to enter their answer for each step of the problem to move on. This, while slower for the user to get an answer, provides the tools to actually understand each step of the problem instead of just jotting down the answer.
Video Concepts Teaching
Along with this we’ve added video tutorials on related concepts based on the topic mentioned in the questions so if students want to hear someone explain the topic in greater depth, it’s available without any additional searching. Students will also be able to explore more on the topic by clicking on the concept tags that we provide for each questions.
Recommending similar problems and tutoring after each solved problem
Lastly, after each problem Chegg recommends similar practice problems as well as a tutor that can help them in the subject. This is another way to encourage students to try to understand the material instead of copying answers.
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This redesigned examined ways that users could better themselves as people. This portion of the redesign focused on virtue ethics and especially how to become excellent human beings. Our redesign of Chegg pushes students to be better people and encourages learning over the easy way out.