About the Client
Lumos Learning is a profitable company that creates EdTech products for the US K-12 Market.
The Product
One of their products is a dashboard that allows teachers to assign content and tests to students and monitor the progress of completion.
The Problem
- The dashboard was too overwhelming for teachers. As a result, the product had low engagement.
- The teachers weren’t following the recommended sequence of assignments, leading to a sub-optimal experience for the students
The Solution
We used a 5-step process to redesign the dashboard in a way that solves both these problems
- Analyzing the current design
- Listing down user concerns
- Defining journeys and uncovering goals
- Brainstorming solutions
- Designing screens (including testing and iterating)
1. Analysis of the current design
In this stage, we understood the current design and conducted heuristic analysis of the screens to uncover problems at various layers of the experience.
Let’s take the example of this screen, where the teacher finds a test to assign to the students. After spending some time with the PM, we realized that there are a bunch of user goals and business goals that it’s addressing through the design.These were noted so that we don’t miss them when redesigning.
2. Understanding persona concerns
Based on an analysis of existing knowledge in the product team, we learnt that the free user and paid user are very different personas who exhibit very different behaviors. Of course, the behaviors stem from the different needs of the personas.
For example, the independent teacher who has found this product on the web will want to test it for suitability before assigning anything to students. The teacher whose school has already paid for the tool through a B2B sale does not share this concern.
This is just one example- the concerns of these personas vary across a range of parameters, and we had to endure that we accommodate both of them in the experience. The business goals varied too for these persona. One of the major goals for the independent teacher was to eventually convert them into a paying user. For the user who had come through a B2B sale, engagement and eventual student success where the business goals from day 1.
3. Uncovering granular user goals
The understanding of persona needs along with available usage data allowed us to map out user journeys that show product usage throughout the academic year.
At each point in the journey, we noted down our hypotheses about the state of the user’s mind and the goals that they wanted to achieve at that point.
For example, in the flow above, you can see that a teacher whose school has paid for the product has two concerns in this flow: 1) Knowing the recommended process and 2) Knowing the recommended item to assign. By doing this exercise for all the user journeys, we uncovered a lot of goals and the state of mind of the user at different points. This helped us kick-start a divergent exercise of finding out how to achieve all the goals.
4. Brainstorming
For each user goal that we identified in the flows, ideas were brainstormed to fulfill them.
Patterns from successful experiences across the industry were studied and used wherever applicable.
One of our Mediyum assets (a library of design patterns in successful educational dashboards) allowed to do this job thoroughly yet at a fast pace.
5. Designing the Wireframes
User goal by user goal, flow by flow and feature by feature, the flows were designed at a medium fidelity to test our hypotheses about the user needs
Rough wireframes were created and shown to potential users and stakeholders. Based on the feedback, the flows, screens and visuals were redesigned.
As you can see below, the two goals that we had identified in the user journeys have been addressed through proven design patterns.
UI/Visual Design
A number of themes were considered after studying the brand values of Lumos and the tastes of the involved stakeholders
A light blue based theme was chosen with starkly contrasting reds for the buttons
Redesigning the flows is just the beginning
The redesign is aimed at increasing engagement, which is a long-term activity. We look forward to supporting Lumos in their journey. The design is being released in a phased manner. After every implementation, the user funnel is studied to track improvements in engagement. The hypotheses that are proved are taken forward and the ones that aren’t get reworked.
Through this iterative process, we are an a journey of continuous improvement to make sure the product reaches its fullest potential.
Credits
Research
- Saurabh Bhide
UX Design
- Bhargavi Bakhle
- Saurabh Bhide
Visual Design
- Parshuram Lamani
- Idris Rodrigues
- Omkar Sangodkar
Illustration
- Parshuram Lamani
- Smisha Nagvekar
