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Client: 3 Consulting & Services LLC
Role: Researcher & Lead Designer
Click to view prototype
Duration: Three Week Sprint
Team: Elieen Ward & Nicole Francis
Overview: Our client 3 Consulting & Services LLC came to us with an idea called "Equitable Education Solutions" which would give users an opportunity to make money on their intellectual property. Through market analysis and user research, the idea eventually became ThrEES, an application for bite-sized education.​
Challenges: A few things my team and I had to overcome during this project were,
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An unresponsive client.
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Client didn't know what the product was.
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Client didn't know how she wanted users to use it.
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Client had a lot of ideas and wanted it all in one product.
Problem: What are we trying to solve?​
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Create a platform that allows users to make money on their intellectual property.
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Allow users to have a platform to learn new things.
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Make the platform fun and easy to use.
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Create a platform that has a new way of creating "course-like" content.
Goals: What is our mission in entering research?​
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Provide content creation capabilities
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Design a platform that will offer bite-sized video learning, that can be viewed in succession as a complete lesson
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Interactive assessments that highlight retention of lesson.
Market research: We began our research by conducting some market analysis. How did we do this?
Competitive analysis:
At the start of our initial research, we felt it was important to understand the current market of e-learning, how content creators are promoting their intellectual property in this space, and which companies are offering this service.
Comparative analysis:
For the comparative analysis, we combined what we learned in our stakeholder interview, along with the information we gained through surveys and interviews, to determine how users are currently meeting their needs and solving their problems.
Competitive analysis & Comparative analysis:
We realized the companies listed offer e-learning platforms with features such as video, asynchronous learning, testing features, and content creator support. What wasn't offered was the bite-sized content that we were looking for.
However, upon further research, we determined that bite-sized content could be formatted similar to Tik Tok, but slightly longer with the features offered by competitors. This would offer small lessons that teach specific skills, and assessments to measure comprehension and retention, all within an affordable platform.
What next?: From here we were able to dive into our user research.
Initial research:
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Review of the 3 LLC business plan
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1 qualitative survey pertaining to eLearning tools
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8 user interviews regarding course-building tools
"I don't have the time to build a whole entire course"​
"I want to measure user success"
Findings:
​The research indicated that users would prefer a mobile application rather than a responsive website. The use of a mobile platform would support "bite-sized" lesson creation, gamification, and interaction between the content creator and students.
" I want all users to have accounts/profiles that can interact"
"I need to create content fast and easy. Just like posting on social media."
Meet Isaiah Roberts
Note: We decided to only focus on the teacher persona in this sprint, due to the lack of time on our three week project but we do intend on doing more research on the student persona and their pain points while using our application aswell.
Isaiah's problem:
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Isaiah needs an educational platform that is quick, easy, and fun to use because he wants to expand his reach outside of his local classroom.
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Isaiah needs a way to gauge student comprehension because he wants to reward student success.
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Isaiah needs a way to interact with students in groups and directly because he wants to answer student questions and combat misinformation.
How might me help Isaiah?
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How might we give Isaiah an educational platform that is quick, easy, and fun to use?
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How might we give Isaiah a way to gauge student comprehension and reward student success?
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How might we implement a way for Isaiah to interact with both groups and individuals on the platform?
Putting pen to paper: Every great design begins with sketches to build off of.
User profile
Content options
Subject options
Video series page
Takeaways from ideation: Two types of accounts Teachers & Students
Profiles:
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Teacher profile: subjects, lessons, series
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Badges to signify expert levels
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Student profile: achievements, subjects followed, creators followed
Content:
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Subjects
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Series
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Series are made up of bite-sized “lessons”
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When series are completed, users complete assessments
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Users can rate and review the series
Product name: Originally "3 Consulting & Services LLC"
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The research indicated that users will prefer a mobile app​
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Apps often have memorable, sometimes quirky, one-word names​
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We took your brand names: Equitable Education Solutions (EES)​
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3 Consulting & Services LLC​
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And fused them to create thrEES​
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thrEES is fun and memorable; it lends itself to clever marketing copy:​ ThrEES puts the ease in education​
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Learning can be as quick as 1-2-three!
Greyscale:
Style guide:
Note: We decided on this style guide because we wanted our users to feel like they weren't learning. We also didn't want our content creators to feel like it was a job for them. We wanted our users to have fun and enjoy using our application. We felt that these colors and font styles, would express that perfectly.
Mock up:
Next step & considerations:
Further research will be required to develop the following capabilities:
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Interactivity
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Private: Chat/Direct Messaging
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Public: Message Board/Comments
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Consulting
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Working with a certified educator to build curricula
Lessons learned:
2 big lessons to apply to future projects:
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​​Team collaboration is so important. Communicating and involving your team in every idea or decision to be made is vital to make a good product. I'm grateful that my team and I made that a habit.
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Letting go of what you can't control. This is something that was hard for me to apply at the beginning of immersing myself in the UX field but in this project when I applied that principle not only was my team and I able to create a user centered product that best met user needs, we were also able to build a great work relationship together. I'm very humbled by that and it's a lesson that I will bring into every future project that I go into.