SaaS E-learning Revolution

Challenge

Many educational platforms struggle with unintuitive interfaces, unclear progress tracking, and limited community interaction, leading to low task completion and user drop-off.

Goal
Design a seamless, motivating learning experience that enhances usability, visual clarity, and community engagement.

Market deep dive

I conducted a thorough market analysis to understand the competitive landscape. This involved reviewing similar apps, identifying user needs, and pinpointing gaps in the current market offerings.

This analysis helped me identify unique opportunities to differentiate our product.

Competitor insights

• User experience for progress tracking and subscriptions – Competitors offer varied methods for tracking progress and charging for subscriptions, but the user experiences are not consistently valuable.

• Lack of integration – No competitors provide integration with other platforms, limiting their functionality and interoperability.

• Complementary products – Competitors complement each other more than they compete, each having unique strengths that could be combined for a comprehensive solution.

Crafting the journey

I created detailed user flows to ensure a smooth and intuitive user experience. These flows mapped out the entire user journey, from registration to course completion and sharing with friends.

As a result:

• Identified potential pain points

• Ensured a logical progression of actions

Ideation in action: Sketches

With user insights in hand, I began the sketching phase, brainstorming and exploring various design concepts.

As a result:

• Quickly iterated on 10+ design ideas

• Visualised potential solutions to key problems

• Sketching allowed me to quickly iterate on ideas and visualise potential solutions before moving into more detailed design work.

Building the framework: From Sketches to Wireframes

The next step was to transform sketches into wireframes.

These low-fidelity designs focused on layout and structure, allowing us to refine the functionality and flow without getting distracted by visual details.

User feedback and testing

During the testing phase, I’ve created a realistic prototype and collected feedback from 15 users to refine the design further.

Key positive insights:

• 75% of users found the new interface more intuitive.

• 80% of users felt a clearer sense of progress.

• 70% of users appreciated the enhanced community features.

Iterating for excellence

Challenges:
The initial designs were too complex, causing confusion among users. Specifically, 8 out of 15 users were unsure of what the community subpage. However, all users quickly understood how to check stats and switch between course platforms, including the user progress feature.
Users expected to view profiles of app members before following or interacting, indicating a need for clearer and more accessible information.

Solution
I added a “Things in common” screen that highlights common interests and courses taken in a user’s profile.
This feature improved interaction and community engagement, leading to a 60% success rate for the task.

Projected outcomes: Measuring success with HEART

Although the app did not launch, success and impact would have been tracked using the HEART framework:

• Happiness: Elevated app ratings and positive feedback, indicating users found the app enjoyable and useful.

• Engagement: Increased app usage, implying more users frequently engaging with the app.

• Adoption: Growth in new sign-ups, reflecting more users discovering the app.

• Retention: Lower attrition rates and more subscription renewals, showing the app’s continued value.

• Task success: Decrease in incomplete task attempts, suggesting the app was successful in helping users achieve their goals.