Lurnweb:
UX Research to Redesign an E-Learning Dashboard
The Challenge of Good, Old-Fashioned Communication
or: “Did you say ‘Black phone’ or ‘Platform’?”
The project:
E-learning dashboard redesign
The client:
Lurnweb bills itself as “a social e-learning marketplace to learn or teach any skill, and connect with peers for the most engaging learning experience.”
The team:
One UX designer/visual design lead
One UX designer/acting project manager
One UX researcher- me
My role:
UX researcher and communications point-person.
Tools and resources:
Zoom, Calendly, Google tools, Figma, Slack, Interviewing Users by Steve Portigal, World Time Buddy
Time frame:
June 28-August 4, 2021
The problem:
At our initial meeting with Lurnweb’s founder, our client, our team was impressed with his enthusiastic vision for the platform as a place where learning, teaching and social media combine. We were excited to be able to work with him to redesign the site to make that possible.
At the time of Lurnweb’s launch, there were two student dashboards: one for student learning, and one for social media, or an activity feed. After some discussion back and forth, we agreed upon setting the goal of our redesign integrating the learning dashboard with the activity feed/social dashboard.
The start-up is based in India, and its first stage of development was for the Indian audience, with future plans to expand to the global public. The platform was initially designed for the web, but many users were now going onto Lurnweb with mobile devices. The plan was to complete the designs in web format, and that the mobile design would follow.
Over the course of a month, I led our team in doing competitive and user research and analysis, and worked with them in the ideation and presentation of our findings in weekly meetings with our client, and other interactions over Slack.
My colleagues created low-fidelity and then high-fidelity prototypes which I conducted usability testing, analysis and feedback on, and they created the final iterated high-fidelity prototype for Lurnweb’s development team to implement.
Our group’s challenge: communication
What does this mean?
The first problem that our team encountered was confusion with our role and the scope of the project. Our contract stated that we would each work 40 hours on this case, 10 hours per person per week, for a month, and to help our industry client, Lurnweb, meet a specific goal. However, it was hard not to be caught up in our client’s infectious enthusiasm. He had no less than four major goals he hoped for us to accomplish, as shown in his slide below.
In his initial slide deck presentation to us, he enumerated the issues he wanted to see fixed, and my colleagues and I quickly responded that we could probably only complete one of these in the time we had together. His priority for us was to integrate the two dashboards.
Since this was our first experience working together as a team, my colleagues and I took some time to get to know each other, and each others’ styles and strengths. Unfortunately, all three of us struggled with how to balance our desire to make the client happy with our contracted commitment limiting us to 40 hours of work. Before even beginning on the meat of the project, we spent at least 10 hours in our first week discussing, consulting with our mentors, writing and re-writing our month-long scope and plan. It was a struggle to find how best to proceed.
But, once our plan was established, our roles were clear and we were ready to work on the research and the site.
UX Research Process
Round 1 of Testing
Competitive Research
We researched more than a dozen competitors, and then focused on one. Domestika was the site with the most desired components that we were trying to emulate.
Competitive Usability Testing
My next step was to conduct competitive usability testing on Domestika, to see how users felt about and reacted to its features. I interviewed two users from India, and observed and spoke with them as they navigated the Domestika site.
Competitive Usability Analysis
I summarized my findings and brought the results of my analysis to the design team and the stakeholder in our weekly presentation meeting.
Once we were finally able to nail down what we would have finished and delivered by when, we began to examine the work space. It quickly became apparent that there were some aspects to this project that were difficult for us to fully understand. My UX designer colleagues and I struggled to understand the distinctions on the existing website between terms such as “Activity Feed” and “Timeline”, “Groups” and “Forums”, or “Course List” and “Wishlist”. At various times in our meetings with our client, we would discuss what we believed these terms meant to each of us, and to the stakeholder. But, the concepts remained fuzzy, most likely stemming from confusing information architecture on the site, which, in turn, led to user confusion in usability testing.
Perhaps because Lurnweb was still half-plan/half-reality, some crucial decisions had not been settled. Several times over the course of the month, we encountered confusion, and the more we talked about terms and structures with our client, he himself saw that he had not made complete decisions. In that way, our conversations together were helpful and brought clarity to all of us.
Two weeks into the project, having seen through usability testing that users were just as confused as we were, I met with my colleagues to do a card sort to see what we could make of the information architecture ourselves. See below my conception of the information architecture of the site with the points of confusion for the users highlighted by arrows and pink notes.
“Working with research data is a combination of analysis (breaking larger pieces into smaller ones) and synthesis (combining multiple pieces into something new).”
— Steve Portigal, Interviewing Users
Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash
Solution
While the team designers created prototypes, I completed the UX research. Our goal was to find solutions to the users’ problems, and to create a dashboard that combined learning and social media in the best format possible.
I researched users’ pain points, what they wanted and needed.
My teammates turned that research into a combined dashboard with streamlined interfaces, clear hierarchy and improved usability.
Our client was overjoyed.
Lurnweb High Fidelity Interactions in Figma 8-4-21
My colleagues’ work from wireframes to low-fidelity mock-ups, to high-fidelity prototype.
How UX Research Made This Design Better
Guerrilla Usability Testing of Lo-Fi Prototype
Round 2 of Testing
From the information gathered in the competitive usability testing, my colleagues created Low-fidelity wireframes that I tested with five users in guerrilla usability testing. They provided valuable insights about what worked well and less well for users, and helped steer us on a path toward more clarity for future users. (Images used with permission.)
Analysis
The results showed a concentration of difficulty around a few tasks, and general confusion about the terms on the site and the information architecture. Users expected to be able to find what they thought of as course-related features under the courses themselves. With this information in hand, I sought to clarify the information architecture in the design with my teammates.
Usability Testing of Hi-Fi Prototype and Analysis
Round 3 of Testing
Target users
The designers came back with a new and improved high-fidelity prototype of the site, which I tested with users in India. (Images used with permission.)
My target users were:
Users in or from India
With access to the internet (preferably via a laptop or desktop computer)
Proficient in English
Interested in learning new skills
Willing to be video-recorded
Some difficulties
Extra microphone interference and noise when I moved
Not all users had a laptop or desktop computer
Not all users gave permission to be video-recorded
The use of Zoom creating delays and affecting speech turn-taking miscues
Multiple conflicting time zones
Users’ confusion re: the time zone for the calendar
Unable to test all of the interactions, limited to 3 or 4
Through each of these testing phases, I was able to provide detailed results to the design team and the founder, to help them continue with the next steps.
Communication:
My personal challenge
Alongside the struggles my team had understanding the information architecture of this e-learning site, I had a challenge of my own conducting user research: communicating with speakers of Indian English.
As an experienced teacher of French and English as a Second Language based in North America, my awareness of speech and accents is probably better than most, but I really struggled to understand my interviewees at times.
My difficulty as a UX researcher understanding and communicating
Different accents
Did you say black phone?- No, platform!
Different terminology
Different contexts
Possible cultural communication norms that I couldn’t even guess at
What helped me in the end was persistence and, well, research.
I treated each interview like a long rapport-building talk with a new friend.
I was patient and attentive. I asked for clarification.
And, once the interview was over, I read all I could about the context that I was missing.
Photo by Eduardo Sánchez on Unsplash
Where to go from here
Given more time to work with Lurnweb’s UX Research, I would plan to workshop with our client, the design team and the developers on the fundamental questions of the information architecture and the navigation of the site through discussion and card-sorting.
Next, I would make a plan to gather more qualitative research. Since India is such an enormous and hugely diverse country, I would consult with UX research experts in India, to find a wide representative population to interview. I would work with in-country experts to prepare several personas to share with the design team. And, I would conduct moderated or unmoderated usability testing with them for every iteration of the platform.
With the limited scope of this project, we were not able to conduct quantitative research. If I had more time, I would access and present data from Google Analytics regarding the devices that users access the site with, and where they are clicking, bouncing or abandoning their carts or courses.
In short, I would help guide Lurnweb’s design team in their conception of the designs for all of the priorities that our client presented to our team so enthusiastically.
Lessons Learned
Practice makes perfect.
Understanding a person’s unfamiliar accent can take a while. Allow extra time to become accustomed to a person whose speech patterns you find difficult to understand at first. Keep listening, ask questions and research what you still don’t know.
Over-prepare.
In the week before I started interviewing people in India, I listened to the excellent audiobook The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, in an effort to prepare myself, in an albeit limited way, for the speech patterns, accents and cultural context of my users. I also find reading novels to be an effective way to open my mind to new experiences and to expand my empathy.
Before each meeting, I made several drafts of my data analysis, to see which presentation would communicate the clearest story.
Learn the tools of the trade.
Time zone confusion goes both ways. By which I mean, I can never remember if California is three hours ahead of or behind the East Coast. When the time difference is EST to Indian Standard Time, the confusion multiplies. The site worldtimebuddy.com did the math for me. And Calendly allowed my subjects and users to set up our appointments in their own time zone.
Over-communicate.
I used Calendly to set up appointments with my subjects for usability testing, and Calendly sent them all email confirmations. I kept my calendar open for 18 hours on testing days in order to accommodate users on the other side of the globe. But one user appeared to think that Calendly was displaying my time zone and not theirs, and tried to accommodate my schedule by setting up the appointment at 2:45 AM IST. I emailed them with a reminder and a hint that they may want to reschedule to a different time.
No matter how intuitive I find the platform, not everyone is familiar with Calendly, and using it didn’t wholly prevent missed appointments, time zone confusion or misspelled emails. Before securing 12 users for my interviews and testing, I dealt with about six no-shows to appointments, dozens of emails, and multiple appointment rescheduling. By the end, I was sending reminder emails 24 hours ahead of time with information about what time the appointments would be in both the user’s and my time zone. For future UX research scheduling, I will continue this habit, which saves time and frustration in the long run.
Stay flexible.
When our contact in India experienced a power outage, we were unable to present our findings to him in our weekly meeting. I quickly filmed myself narrating the slide show and sent him the link via Slack.
When a user did not give me permission to video record her, and when her phone did not allow her to see the team’s Figma prototype, I scrapped my plans to conduct usability testing with her, and interviewed her about her use of online learning platforms instead. By the end of the half hour I spoke with her, I realized she was the truest example of a Lurnweb student that I had met.
Final Takeaways- Conclusion
“One of usability’s most hard-earned lessons is that ‘you are not the user.’”
-Jakob Nielsen
Everything about this project, from the time zone difference, to the accents, to the language was screaming to me,
“You are not the user!”
It was easy to feel separate within a context that was foreign to me in every way. What I decided to take from this experience, however, was this:
In every UX research environment, you are a stranger in a strange land.