Improving Online Education
design & research
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design & research ✦
About the Project
How can we fix a platform we can't fully rebuild?
The client identified low customer satisfaction, high incomplete rates, and high volume of customer service calls regarding their online learning center. Additionally, their enterprise users also suffered from high inefficiencies, resulting in unsatisfactory business partnerships.
Unfortunately, many of their root issues were caused by their third-party SaaS platform: while the platform itself had features critical for caregivers, there were many constraints that made it difficult to tailor to caregiver needs. As a result, the client’s many workarounds created unclear navigational architecture, unnecessary redundancy, lack of meaningful information, and burying of critical tasks.
Our team was brought in to conduct a combination of rapid iterative testing and evaluation (RITE) method and qualitative inquiry to provide validated design recommendations. Through four rounds over 16 weeks, our team was able to identify 78 issues and offer over 210 design recommendations, of which the was 80% immediately actionable.
The final design recommendations focused on decluttering unnecessary information, surfacing important tasks, and implementing clear and consistent labeling. We also recommended a few custom solutions that would require an external developer to create and implement.
Our Process
01
Heuristic Evaluation
Our team read the client's existing technology report and ran our own heuristic evaluation of the platform, surfacing inconsistencies, system errors, and basic interaction issues before testing a single user. We reviewed findings with the client’s team and held multiple conversations with the platform's vendor to understand what was actually fixable.
Scoping the enterprise side took longer — their workflows spanned multiple systems and needed real discovery before we could even write a discussion guide.
02
Rapid Iterative Testing & Evaluation (RITE)
Our team built two prototypes and two discussion guides for caregivers, covering two distinct training programs, each targeting 7–9 tasks pulled from the heuristic evaluation. For the enterprise users, we built one research activity with visual stimuli to gather deeper business requirements.
Our research process included 4 rounds of RITE testing with caregivers (5–6 participants per round) and 3 rounds with superusers (3–4 per round). From each research process, we would work with the client to identify issues, prioritize problems, and prototype the next workflow to test.
During our design process, we found that a few of our suggestions would exceed the platform's real limits. While the client was open to some custom-coded fixes, we recognized the solution would require a larger investment than they initially planned. As a result, we pushed the platform as far as possible before proposing custom solutions.
03
Design Adoption Plan
Our team delivered Final Recommendations spanning four categories for caregivers (52 issues) and three for superusers (26 issues), plus a Plan of Action with 220 total design recommendations, each rated for difficulty and level of impact. The Plan of Action was built to support the developers in every design decision with the identified problem, user testing data, and design rational.
When a handful of custom solutions turned out not to be feasible near-term, I spent another 1.5 weeks building non-custom alternatives for a stopgap measure inbetween the current and future state.
Client Quotes
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password protected ✦
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