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Learner's Jam

Empowering your self-learning journey through curated learning pathways with community support.

Timeline:

Dec 22 - May 23

Team Member:

Simran(Product Designer)

Ronny, Regan(UX Designer)

Responsibilities

UX Research, Ideation, User Interviews, Usability testing, UI Design, Prototyping

The Problem

Most online courses follow a fixed schedule for its lessons, or if you use platforms like YouTube, you set your own schedule, relying on generic calendar tasks, without catering to the unique learning needs of self-study.

The Solution

A self-learning system focused on task planning, motivating learners constantly, utilizing chunking methods, and creating a community of mentors that is financially accessible and reliable. Users should be able to reach out and access other people's self-learning pathways.

The Process

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Empathize

Ideate

Design

Test  

Prototype

We conducted interviews with student peers and teachers using online and in-person surveys. Our curiosity delved into their learning organization, sources of motivation, reasons for losing motivation, and the resources they found helpful.

Uncover gaps in learning processes

1. Empathise

KEY POINTS

What is their learning style?

  • No specific timetable/ task list

  • Follow other's learning pathways

​What would motivate them?

  • Supervision & Competitive spirit can boost learning

  • Success indicators like Certificates

Who do they ask for help?

  • Peers, friends and Teachers

  • Find it difficult to approach senior professionals

Which platforms they use?

  • YouTube

  • Cousera, Udemy, EDX

Understanding the market

To understand what’s out there that helps with time management, task organization, online learning, goal tracking and finding peer learners. We laid out screen captures in Figma and shared thoughts on the positives and negatives of applications like Forest, Cold turkey, Asana, Any.do, Chronus, Focus@Will, Google Primer. Doing this helped lay out my thought process on what makes for a great experience for task management.
​Competitive Analysis of the various platforms helped us understand the features we can focus on and problems we can iterate on. This was done by analyzing them on the scale of similarities and uniqueness, and strengths and weaknesses. 

KEY POINTS

A great progress visualization on the Forest app gives users ways to customize trees build in a little forest by completing tasks.

Platforms that feature organization of tasks have a very minimalistic user friendly UI with quick action buttons.

Most task management platforms provide a timed focus feature using pomodoro technique.

2. Ideate
After the research, we employed affinity diagrams to define product requirements, and started ideating on the features based on the user pain points, needs and wants.

Understanding user requirements

KEY POINTS

Hindrances

  • Time management

  • Absence of help and supervision

  • Measurable success

Community group

  • Community of learners

  • Ranking of learners

  • Virtual money

Systems for motivation

  • Progress visualization

  • Certificates for courses completed

  • Peer learners

Self-directed learning

  • Set your own course tasks

  • Import courses available online

  • Library of courses

Breaking down the bigger picture

We collaboratively listed out our findings and research analysis. We numbered the factors that affected self-directed learning and came up with ways we could improve the experience for users. 

A data visualization showcasing progress and success indicators boosts motivation.​

A goal tracking system aids learning by enabling users to set self-paced learning pathways.
Incorporating a mild competitive spirit through a ranking system will help motivate users.
Being able to reach out to peers on similar learning journey will help in quantifying their progress and answer their questions.

KEY POINTS

​Empathy Mapping

We were curious to know more about our users day to day self learning journey. We used empathy mapping to point out the issue through their eyes, and empathizing with their feelings. 

​User Persona

​To zone in more into the user from empathy maps, we created a user persona.
​From here on, I was working solo for the rest of the project to ensure we create 3 different prototypes. 
3. Design

Information Architecture

KEY FEATURES 

Self-directed curriculum pathways that allows users to create their schedules and explore others'.

A goal tracking system that aids learning by using daily motivational content.

Community feature with weekly ranking(1,2,3), blog posts, and chats. 

Achievement Visualization that is customizable (Lego, rubix cube, puzzles) and engaging.

Creating test flows

​​I created low-fidelity mockups and prototypes for user testing. The flow of prototype focused on introducing the following screens: Home, Progress, Profile, My Courses, Course Calendar (with Month, week, day view),  Add your course, Community Rankings, Community chats and Explore public courses, 
There were two flow tasks I wanted to test: 
Can users add their own course?
Can they find public courses and navigate around the Course Calendar?
Since our app is related to user behavior, I first met our testers in person to give them a basic tutorial and see if they have any problems with the app. Then, I let them explore the app on their own. After each period of time(weekly/monthly), I tracked our testers feedbacks. I aimed to not completely expose the problem statement or drive them to the solution. The Ecosystem of Wicked Problem was helpful to identify focus areas to narrow down problems.
4. Test

​User Testing Plan

WHAT AM I TESTING?

Functionality

What all can you understand from Home screen?​

Navigation

Is the user flow logic clear? Can users complete tasks?

Motivation of involvement

How many times would you have opened the app daily/weekly/monthly?

Feature importance

What goals of self-paced learning does it help to achieve?

 

Connection

Does the home screen have all the necessary components? Do other main screens? What's missing?

Functionality

How helpful are reward systems or do you think the app is?

​User Testing Results

The feedback revealed issues like unclear icons, a focus on public courses over personal ones, unclear naming conventions, and a less intuitive flow.
A design heuristics evaluation helped me solve these problems by employing principles like Recognition over recall, Match between system and real world, Hick's law and Consistency and standards.

Based on user testing results, high-fidelity mockups were developed, adhering to design heuristics. Refinements were made to enhance the user experience, ensuring clarity, efficiency, and intuitive navigation.

5. Prototype

High Fidelity Mockups

Recognition over Recall:

  • Implementing clear and consistent navigation structures.

  • Using familiar icons and terminology that users can easily recognize.

​

Visual Cues:

  • Providing visual cues and contextual information to help users understand what actions they can take next.

  • We use a clear color scheme to indicate task priority: red for older tasks, green for completed, and purple for future tasks. This helps users quickly recognize the urgency of tasks at a glance.

​

Minimal aesthetic design:

  • Reducing clutter by eliminating unnecessary elements and focusing on essential functionalities.

  • Using whitespace effectively to create a clean and organized layout.

  • Ensuring that visual design elements, such as color and typography, enhance readability and usability without overwhelming the user.

​

Delve into user pain points beyond assumptions 

  • I started out with some assumptions from my own self-directed learning journey but delving more into user interviews and testing I quickly understood that there are more issues than I had identified.

  • While I faced problems with organization of tasks within self paced learning context, users also faced issues such as losing focus and motivation due to absence of supervision and measurable success. 

  • What motivates individual is a whole spectrum ranging from incentives to complete tasks, visual progress indicators, and competitive spirit. 

Future iterations

  • During our interviews there was an aspect of virtual/real money being an risk based incentive to complete tasks. In my future iteration I would want to explore how gamifying the system with virtual money would yield results. 

  • I would also like to focus on reaching out to community members for specific issues like learning together, a blog for questions to ask and follow community leaders.

REFLECTIONS

Revised UI and Flows

I love engaging in feedback sessions and reworking my design. In one of such sessions, I was advised to explore how to polish my UI for users who are more accustomed to a certain design system than to push mine. This helped me look at my work from a new angle and study the iOS component kit to understand their spacing, layout, and icons. I realized how this actually polished my ideas and brought clarity to flows that were missing.

The Final Solution

The UI was redesigned to establish a design system and explore visual inconsistencies or missing hierarchy. 
Self-Directed Curriculum Pathways:
Users can create their own learning schedules by assigning tasks to a date and time, composing personalized pathways or exploring publically available ones to pursue.

Calendar with Month, Week and Day views of Tasks:
Progress breakdowns and task lists guide learners through their learning adventures. It offers visual clarity and organization, ensuring users never lose sight of their learning milestones.

Community Engagement:
Step into the peer community where learners connect, share and chat. The ranking system adds a dash of friendly competition, fostering motivation. Blog Posts and chats feature create a support space, to share insights.
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