UXperience Learning: A Journey Through Design and Usability
Introduction
I was always fascinated by the way different websites were designed and decided to pursue a career in designing user interfaces and experiences, and started learning more about it.
Goal:
Create an end-to end website application to provide a digital platform for education and training, enabling learners to acquire knowledge and skills through electronic means. Designed to facilitate effective and engaging learning experiences, often using technology to enhance the educational process.
Problem:
Traditional education methods face several limitations, including limited accessibility, inflexibility in scheduling, and a one-size-fits-all approach. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for robust online learning solutions.
The existing eLearning landscape lacks a platform that seamlessly integrates high-quality content, interactive features, and personalized learning paths. Learners often struggle to find engaging and relevant educational materials.
My Impact
To address the issues I validated the need for the original product I had in mind and leveraged data from the research to create an end-to-end product as a solo designer.
Offer a wide variety of courses and educational resources across diverse subjects and skill levels.
Provide an intuitive and user-friendly interface that makes it easy for learners of all ages and backgrounds to access and navigate educational content.
Support personalized learning journeys, allowing learners to set goals, track progress, and receive tailored recommendations
Foster a sense of community and collaboration through features like discussion forums and peer-to-peer learning.
Ensure reliability, security, and data privacy to instill trust among learners and educators.
Stay up-to-date with the latest educational technologies and pedagogical approaches to continuously enhance the learning experience.
This problem statement outlines the key issues in the eLearning space that the website intends to solve and highlights the goals and features it aims to offer to its users.
Design Thinking Process:
A non-linear, iterative process which helps to understand user needs & challenges. It includes 5 stages
Empathize
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test
Research Phase
I started working on the design by first doing a user research to identify and understand the target audience, which includes students, educators, professionals, or other groups.
Conduct user surveys, interviews, or focus groups to gather insights into their preferences, pain points, and expectations regarding online learning.
Created user personas to represent your primary user segments, helping you design the platform with their needs in mind.
Conducted a thorough analysis of the eLearning market, including trends, competitors, and potential partners.
Identified the key players in the eLearning industry and assess their strengths and weaknesses.
Explored the types of educational content that are in demand. Determine whether to offer courses, tutorials, webinars, or other formats.
Seek feedbacks and validation from potential users and educators throughout the research phase to ensure that the platform aligns with their needs and expectations.
Built few mock ups, wireframe designs, user journey maps & user flow diagrams.
Conduct usability testing or prototype testing to gather real-world insights.
Competitive Research
For this part of the project I decided to explore top competitor websites apps and compare key features and see what problems they address. Looked for gaps in the market where this eLearning platform can provide unique value.
As I’d like to set my users for the long-time success, I realized that can be achieved by designing a product, that addresses the problems.
Research:
My first step was to conduct user research to gain insights into the websites design strengths and weaknesses. I conducted interviews with people of different age groups and sex to understand their needs, pain points, and expectations and started building user journey maps, user empathy, user flows, sitemap.
Problem Statements:
Enhancing Engagement and Interactivity
“Integrate interactive elements, such as quizzes, gamified challenges, and discussion forums, to increase learner engagement and facilitate peer-to-peer learning.”
Solution:
Implement gamified challenges and activities that motivate learners to complete tasks, earn points, and achieve milestones.
Integrate discussion forums within each course, enabling learners to ask questions, share insights, and engage in peer-to-peer discussions.
Prioritize a user-centric design approach, making sure that all interactive elements are intuitive and accessible across devices.
Define
User Personas
User Journey Map
It is a visual process user goes through to complete a particular task.
Ideation
Feature Prioritization
After realizing what solution would bring the most value for my users, I decided to take it a step further and brainstorm the ideas for the actual features. I want the app to be easy to use on the go. It requires an easy interface, streamlined onboarding and access to the main feature. The research part provided me with enough info to determine which features will bring low vs. high value to the user.
User Empathy
User empathy is about trying to see any user’s perspective on the product that you are working on. It’s about being able to identify with them and represent them when making decisions that might benefit or hurt them.
User Flow Diagrams
User flow diagrams are used to figure out the flow of a website or application after you’ve thought about the customer experience and user needs. It’s important to map and visualize them.
Sitemap
A user experience sitemap is a map of various pages on your website. The purpose of the UX sitemap is to allow visualizing how individual webpages or site sections are related to each other.
The Design Phase:
Using the insights from my research/interviews, I began designing the website’s new user interface. I focused on creating a simple and intuitive layout that would allow everyone quick access and also incorporated a new color scheme and typography that reflected the brand’s values of luxury and sophistication.
To improve the user experience, I added several new features such as a Quiz & gaming. I also optimized the pages to include high-quality images, detailed descriptions and customer testimonials.
Lo-fi Wireframes
The first version of lo-fi wireframes allowed me to run early usability tests and discover the priority revisions that need to be implemented ASAP. That decreased the number of iterations to the later versions with all effort being put into creating the hi-fi interface.
Prototype & Test
The Testing Phase:
Before finalizing the new website design, I conducted usability testing with a group of close friends to gather feedback on the design and user experience. Based on their feedback, I made several tweaks to the design, such as making the navigation menu more visible and reducing the number of steps required to complete a purchase.
Conclusion:
Designing the website was a challenging but rewarding experience that taught me the importance of user-centered design, by listening to various user feedbacks & incorporating best practices in UI/UX design.
Here is the Link to the Prototype