Rbean is an EdTech startup that provides a student-centered LMS. They designed their LMS around the science of how people learn, to help students become autonomous learners. Their UX revolves around the activities and projects students undertake, rather than the content delivered to them. Along the way they built a rich set of features that target student motivation and progress - either inspired from games (achievements, skill points) or from instructional design (assessment through rubrics, varied feedback). They baked in features to facilitate peer learning like a Community page, present in each project, where students can share their findings or ask for help.
Why, then, did students not adopt those features readily? They needed help in figuring out how they could improve the value of those features in students' eyes - and thus improve the quality of their learning.
ROLE
Sole UX Designer: UX research, UX design, UI design, Prototype testing
PROJECT TIMELINE
2 months
THE PROBLEM
Learners changing careers need to be able to track their progress so they know which skills they have acquired or the ones they still have to develop. They want to understand how these skills will be used in the professional world, and how important they will be. They also need to have a detailed understanding of their skills so they can specialise in a field and improve some technical skills.
To have a better understanding of the day-to-day learning and the most common issues the learners would encounter during their course I set up a 2-week long diary study - it appeared that the highlight of their day is normally after successfully completing an exercise or a project or resolving a problem. The 1:1 interviews were then divided in two parts:
Typically between the age of 25-35 years old, they are changing careers and doing a tech course. They are not always looking at doing the same job as they can go on to specialise in different areas.
WHAT PROBLEMS DO STUDENTS ENCOUNTER?
Although these frustrations were essential to note, it was also important to consider some points that they currently appreciate:
HOW CAN WE FIX THAT?
Tracking their progress? It seems obvious and essential, but how could this be done? Aren’t grades and reviews enough? Grades and reviews depend on their mentor or teacher, and learners might not get enough feedback. Rbean already provides skill and competency levels - since users weren’t aware of these levels and how to find them, it seemed important to use this existing feature and implement it differently.
The ideation workshop organised with users validated the use of rewards, such as achievements, badges and skill levels. It also confirmed the need of having their progress (projects, skills, grades, reviews) clearly visually represented.
How about their lack of confidence towards their capacity of finding a first role in a new industry? Learners feel reassured by knowing what they are good at but also by having real-life advice from professionals and better insights on their future job search.
Rbean’s pedagogy relies - amongst other things - on collaboration and resolving problems together. The issue was that users hadn’t used Community before, some because they didn’t feel like it was necessary and some others because they hadn’t noticed it. Working on a better discoverability of Community became part of this project.
I conducted a heuristic evaluation to understand how the visibility of the key features could be improved so learners could easily access them. It also allowed me to uncover some design issues.
Here are the main opportunities that were identified:
From the lack of visibility that was talked about during the 1:1 interviews, the heuristic evaluations, and the new features that were ideated I was able to create a new information architecture before I started prototyping. 2 main features were added to the sidebar: Community and Dashboard while a new Inbox can be found from the homepage.
USER TESTING
The first round of user testing included a mid-fidelity prototype testing through Maze, followed by a survey to understand the user’s thoughts behind the testing. The second round was conducted through live remote user testing on the high-fidelity prototype, to gain better insights from the users.
Community wasn’t very well understood in the first round and needed to be redesigned with a focus on the content. The job skills were a success but the users expressed the need to have more information and not to be limited to a job description and the skills demanded.
From the homepage, learners can easily track their current project - they know what skills they are working on, and their current level. They can see at a glance the progress of the project.The action section allows them to quickly see if there is anything they have to do or submit.
Previously found in each project, Community can now also be accessed from the sidebar, where learners can see the latest posts or questions or see the the projects with the most recent activity and easily click on it.
While Rbean already displays achievements, skills and competencies by level - they are not easy to find and most users had no idea it existed. In the dashboard that is accessible from the sidebar they can find everything on one page, and dive into each category for further information.
Learners need to know what skills will matter once they start looking for a job, and since there are many paths they could follow after a course it can get confusing.The job skills list the potential jobs they could apply for in the future, as well as a description and a list of the soft and hard skills required. They can also find a salary expectation and testimony from people currently doing this role.They can choose a job to add to their personal goal, or create their own path by adding the skills they would like to develop.
Once the Personal Goal is set up, learners can track the projects and the skills that will focus on the job they chose. They can also easily edit it if they feel like they would like to do something different.Once the goal is completed, the learner will receive a badge that can later be displayed.
