This project was a five-week design project hosted by IterateUX. Designers were randomly grouped to solve a problem and showcase their process and solutions to a panel of industry professionals. My team was awarded 1st place out of 27 teams.
Overview
Process ❖User Research ❖Define problem ❖Ideation ❖Final submission
Team ❖Four designers, randomly assigned
Tools used ❖Figma ❖Google Drive ❖Mural ❖Calendly
My key contributions ❖UX Research lead ❖UX Design ❖Project Management
The product and the Problem
Udemy.com is utilized by 57 million people striving to increase their knowledge, skills, and expand career options. E-learners have additional responsibilities such as demanding jobs and/or families which require most of their time. In order to reach their goals they need a platform that is easy to use, responsive, accessible, and flexible.
My initial user research indicated that e-learners on the platform are often: ❖ Overwhelmed by the number of courses offered ❖ Experience difficulty finishing courses due to motivation or time constraints ❖ Have difficulty choosing a course after narrowing down to two or three options
Our Solution
Considering the strengths and weaknesses of various e-learning sites collected from user surveys, user interviews, and usability tests we chose to address issues e-learners come across most frequently. This led us to focus on: ❖ Minimizing visual stimulus to prevent information overload or choice paralysis ❖ Draw attention to key features that users enjoy, but many indicated they often miss/forget about ❖ Update the design to betteradhereto accessibility standards
**Click here to skip straight to our design decisions, click here to skip to my learnings from this project, or scroll down to see details on each phase of this project leading to the findings and solutions above**
Research Phase
I advocated for conducting both user interviews and usability tests together as we were working with short time frame but needed deep knowledge of user behavior and needs for an effective redesign. I've been looking into utilizing mixed methods (here is a cool read on the subject).
User Survey I created an intentionally short online survey with a teammate to obtain user demographics, needs/motivations, and to prompt user interview sessions. The intent of the survey was to ask as few questions as possible to obtain key persona details and create a solid basis for user interview and usability testing.
The goal was to obtain 15 survey responses and at least 5 participants for user interviews. We received 32 survey responses and 10 participants interested in a user interview; much more than we aimed for, but I pointed out it allows us to explore multiple solution and once we decided on a persona, we get to choose participants that most strongly align with our persona.
Click to view survey questions and responses
Survey Learnings ❖ 59% of participants are between the ages of 30 and 49 (indicating most participants are middle-aged adults) ❖ 66% hold a Bachelor's Degree (indicating they aren't utilizing e-learning as primary educational needs) ❖ 66% of participants use e-learning platforms irregularly (indicating e-learning might not take a priority in daily life or there are undiscovered issues we can lean into during interviews) ❖ Personal learning and a career change are overwhelming intentions, 50% and 63%, respectively (indicating the desire for growth in knowledge, or career goals, appear to be strong motivations)
User Interviews I was the sole communicator with all users, addressing all questions/concerns and led 80% of all interviews/usability sessions.
I created a user interview script as well as a usability interview script to ensure key topics are addressed in each interview.
Click to view a couple of interview script questions
User Interview Learnings Conducting user interviews allowed us to: ❖ Obtained data on personal pain points users experienced (time, motivation, technical constraints, etc.) ❖ Discover commonalities affecting finishing courses ❖ Learn about factors contributing to choosing an online platform and factors affecting how a course is selected ❖ Gained additional insight about advantages and disadvantages of Udemy competitors
Usability Test Goals: ❖ Observe how users interact with the website overall ❖ Collect thoughts/feelings about particularly high traffic pages (e.g. homepage and search page) ❖ Take note any frustrations as well as points of delight while using the site ❖ Investigate any differences between choosing a course for leisure and work
Click to view a couple of usability test script tasks
Learnings ❖ Pop-up informational modal caused significant problems during usability testing ❖ Users were consistently overwhelmed by the amount of content presented on the landing page ❖ Multiple users remarked on not finishing courses on Udemy specifically ❖ Users leaned towards dissatisfaction at the marketing content : ‘discount sales’ and ‘bundling’ ❖ Top reasons for selecting a course were: price, reviews, information about the teacher, course content, thumbnail
Define Phase
We hit a road block on this phase; we had trouble organizing user data. We decided that myself and my UX research parter would return the next day to think about additional strategies. I believe the trouble was due to the incorporation of distinct types of user data: user interview data and usability testing data.
Discussing differences in feedback received from interviews and usability tests, I suggested we try incorporating a Venn diagram, which allowed us to create clusters in accordance to proximity to our overarching themes of emotionally-driven themes and content-driven themes (aka user interview data and usability testing data, respectively), with clusters pertaining to both themes at the center.
Ideation Phase
How Might We As a team we individually created 'How Might We' statements, discussed the implications of each, and selected the three that best represent Santiago's needs (our chosenpersona): ❖ How might we account for users’ limited time and focus so they can maximize the benefits of online learning? ❖ How might we highlight the main factors user's look for when searching to purchase a new course? ❖ How might we increase user accountability in order to motivate them to finish courses in Udemy (and take others)?
Sketches
All team members worked on sketches. Below are a couple of my sketches. I based all sketches on key findings from the research phase (and indicated design changes in red for clarity).
'Course card' sketch process: ❖ Based on participant feedback the 3 most important reoccurring detailsusers look for when choosing a course are the thumbnail, title and rating. My recommendation is having these 3 items together on the left-hand side of each course card. ❖ I would also recommend adding an'estimated completion time', a feature multiple users of other e-learning sites specifically sited as helpful/favorite feature when searching for a course. ❖ A key pain point of Udemy users when searching for courses is a floating modal that appears when users hover over a course card (on the Search page). Participants find this annoying because the modal covers the rest of the course details. I recommended altering the modal to become a clickable component.
'My Learning' page sketch process: ❖ Participant feedback indicated that the 'My Learning' page is only used to find purchased courses, sometimes to remember what course(s) they're working on. My recommendation is to make this page more attractive by increasing the size of the thumbnail and including course details, as seen when a user purchases a course. The intent is to reignite/remind users what they'll learn/attain from the course. ❖ Multiple users mentioned a favorite feature of another e-learning site where users select a desired completion date and a modal calculates the hours per week necessary to complete the course by their desired completion date. I would recommend investigating if this favorite feature can be added to the Udemy platform.
Redesign Decisions Based on team feedback, our HMW statements, time frame, and goal of redesigning for the most impact we made the decision to focus on the following key areasof the homepage: ❖ Navigation bar ❖ Hero section ❖ My Learning section ❖ Homepage body that showcase additional courses
LoFis Two designers and I worked LoFis. In our work we utilized Figma's chat functionality to discuss ideas, progress, and ask/give additional feedback. LoFi iterations of the navigation bar:
A LoFi iteration of the homepage
HiFis I collaborated with one other designer, mainly utilizing Figma's chat functionality, to discuss final changes and give/provide additional team feedback on our design decisions. Below are the key components we redesigned: Udemy old navigation bar:
Our redesigned navigation bar:
Design decisions: ❖ Moved search bar to the center of navigation bar: our usability tests indicated the search bar is the most used item on the navigation bar ❖ Added speech-to-text functionality to the search bar for accessibility and inclusivity, as its a very popular feature ❖ Updated icons to rounded buttons, to better visualize the touchpoint, and increased their size to abide by Google’s Material Design Standards. ❖ Simplification of navigation bar: (1) The content of the bottom-most sections were consolidated under the ‘browse courses’ button on the left of our redesign. 'Udemy Business' and 'Teach for Udemy' buttons were consolidated under the purple ‘My Learning’ button in the redesign.
Udemy old Hero Image:
Redesigned Hero Images:
Design decisions: ❖ Inline links were updated to buttons to create a stronger, more eye-catching CTA for users and increase click rates ❖ Updated imagery to be less abstract, less focused on daily sales (which an overwhelming amount of users strongly disliked) with images of productivity actions, and stronger Udemy colors making hero items more memorable and motivating.
Udemy old 'My Learning' section:
Our redesigned 'My Learning' section:
Design decisions: ❖ Updated the ‘My Learning’ link to a purple button (on the right of both versions) for a stronger CTA and visibility ❖ Added course thumbnails for each class to increase visibility of active courses and draw, creating incentive to continue courses ❖ Added a numerical value to the course completion bar to indicate track completion progress, taking the guesswork out of course progress
Final Submission
Final homepage HiFi:
Reflections and Learnings
Impacts of our redesign: ❖ Reduced cognitive overload ❖ Addressed key usability issues on the platform, such as the pop-up course information modal ❖ Redesigned components to encourage users to return to their courses and feel motivated to self learn ❖ Better balance of user and business goals with updates to the hero section of the landing page ❖ Added design choices to encourage search and browsing by improving the highly-used search bar
Challenges of the project: ❖ As one of the most popular e-learning websites, Udemy did not require significant structural re-design. A large part of this project was understanding what should not change about the website as much as what should. ❖ Without a clear objective on behalf of the website, namely specific business goal(s) set by Udemy leaders, it was difficult to choose what direction our UX team should take. ❖ Working within an established design system while utilizing our user research to find areas for improvement.
Thank you — yes you!
Thank you for taking a look at my work. I had a great time working on a team of fellow designers! A special thank you to the IterateUX team — I am grateful for the opportunity!
