How I improved video viewing experience for Airtribe

Amazing sensei(s) and Hokages decided to give each one of us problem statements from real products that are out there in the market at 10K Designers. Oh, and you should totally check this cohort based learning by 10K designers out, who are on a mission to empower 10,000 designers at their early stage or folks starting out in product design to learn, collaborate and vibe in the ever-changing design industry. Anyway, let’s get to the problem statement I picked.

WTF is Airtribe?

Airtribe is a new-age upskilling platform focussed on the intersection of expert-led education and community-based learning from top industry practioners. Airtribe was our LMS tool when I joined 10K designers as a designer in residence, which helped us re-watch LIVE sessions, watch pre-recorded videos, submit assignments, receive mentor and peer feedbacks, participate in group discussions, and share resources with the entire community.

I’ve added the problem statement below.👇🏾

Enhance the video viewing experience on Airtribe to make consuming lengthy educational content easier for our learners.

Few assumptions that I made:

1. The solution I wanted to propose is to keep it purely from the learner’s side, hence not weighing the efforts from creators’ POV, because of time constraints.
2. This problem statement is under the assumption that the educational content is well-designed by the practitioners.

Before we start, who uses Airtribe?

This platform is used by two distinct personas — Creator, and Learner.

Creators are industry experts from top companies, who lead LIVE interactive sessions, and provide feedback on projects.

Learners are college students, working professionals, career-changers, or up-skillers (individuals looking to expand their skillset and staying relevant in their respective fields).

Illustration courtesy: Ben Diagi

Dear dopamine junkies, this one’s for you!

This section is for folks who want to skip all the deets to jump to the redesign (Who doesn’t like to judge a book by it’s cover? 😛)

Oh, and, one more thing. I didn’t spend too much time on creating design system from scratch because I wanted to work my problem solving muscles for this assignment. Also, Airtribe’s design system is minimal and sleek. Krithi likeeey!

Before:

1. Video lessons, and projects have been combined in one view to see the entire course content but it is not intuitive that clicking on video lesson / Projects would filter the course content.
2. There is no feedback given to creator to improvise individual course modules / milestones.
3. Learner has to open every course module and sift through every recording to find the content that they want to revisit / watch.

After:

1. Three separate tabs have been added — All, Video lessons, Projects (All is the active tab by default to view the entire course curriculum at a glance).
2. Feedback for each course module is given to the creator to understand how learners are perceiving specific content. When the feedback is poor for a specific course module, it is available only to the creator.
3. Social proof element has been added or each course module to motivate the learner to open the content that other learners find helpful.

Before:

1. Opening recorded / pre-recorded videos for every topic is a two-step process.
2. Resources open outside the platform.
3. Video recording lacks timestamps to jump to a specific content.
4. Since the recorded / pre-recorded videos are one-sided inside the platform, it often lacks interactivity.

After:

1. Clear demarcation has been added between topic video and other sections. This was also done to increase recall for Airtribe brand.
2. Accordion items have been shifted to tab items to see the section headers at a glance which helps in scanning the contents without having to scroll.
3. Entire video is divided into chapters for chunking information which is also easier to process and find specific content.
4. Social proof element (Reactions) has been added or each course module to motivate the learner to open the content that other learners find helpful.

Before:

Breakout activities done during LIVE sessions are currently captured inside Zoom chat. This increases the time taken to find the URLs when conversations are more

After:

There is a separate tab to view all the breakout activities done by cohort members and people can also like, comment on these URLs to motivate learners.

Before:

Learners who want to practice what they just learnt in every topic need to go outside the platform to test their understanding.

After:

Job prep section has been added for every topic with a skill graph to test their understanding which is practical, and hands-on.

For folks who want to read all the nitty-gritties that went into cooking this redesign, You know you’re amazing! 🤩

The problem statement was well-defined when I read it for the first time. But I also wanted to understand WHY is this a big enough problem for me to solve or what are the product metrics that get affected because of not solving this problem to understand the impact on a deeper level.

Product metrics that could get affected because of not solving this problem:

1. Drop-off rates — Lack of motivation to sift through the entire video recording could lead to learners dropping off from specific course modules.
2. Customer Satisfaction — CSAT scores could decrease as learners express dissatisfaction with the video viewing experience.
3. Completion rates — Learners might not like to complete courses or modules if they encounter video playback issues or find the entire experience frustrating.

UX/UI Audit to understand current behaviour

I went through the current screens of Airtribe to audit this specific user flow — User wants to watch a specific recorded video.

Ofcourse, these were my personal observations.

Validation makes me sane.

I got on a call with a bunch of curious minds (cohort members) who set out to solve the other problem statements given by Airtribe team, and it was a judgement-free zone where every participant spoke their mind out on what they liked about Airtribe, what could be improved and how different products in the market build video streaming experience.

I was lucky enough to validate my own set of hypotheses with the same set of participants as each of us, inside 10K Designers, actively used Airtribe to watch course content and submit projects.

What did the unstructured qualitative user interview help me understand?

There are 3 types of learners who come to the platform to rewatch LIVE videos on Airtribe.

People who missed their LIVE classes

People who attended their LIVE classes but want to revisit specific topics to brush up on their skills or prepare for job interviews

People who attended their LIVE sessions but had to leave early

Solutioning, solutioning and solutioning…

Based on the current user flow given, and the JTBDs that I could collect from primary research and competitive analysis (Zoho notebook, Skillshare, Loom, Growth School, Domestika, and Youtube), I started out with basic sketches on how I was envisioning the new user journey.

Couple of things I kept in mind while I was sketching —

Show value as soon as a user decides to watch a specific video recording

Make sure the social proof is on point because I’m a social animal that’s more inclined to do something by seeing others.

Reduce areas of friction as much as possible

Don’t let the user go outside the platform.

After a few iterations and wireframes, I decided to move onto visual design to complete the user flow. I’ve added the Loom video below.

All in all, it was a fun problem statement to solve. Let me know what you think in the comments! I’m still learning, unlearning and relearning. :)

Also thanks to valuable insights on current journey of online course learning platforms by Grace and Mohan!

I like to bring your beautiful ideas to life whenever I can and give unsolicited feedback to digital products 🤓 If you’re looking for a designer who can bring your idea to reality in this digital world, reach out here 👉🏾 https://designwithkrithi.framer.website/