Designing an online learning platform
3rd project as a UX/UI student in Ironhack Berlin
The challenge of this project was about creating an online learning platform that will transform the in-person learning experience into a 100% digital experience in 5 days.
Background: Fun People Inc. offers fun, immersive, in-person German language workshops in Berlin. Their workshops are unique because they put an emphasis on speaking, listening, and conversations — three crucial elements for learning a foreign language.
First steps
Our first goal was to understand why people drop out of online language courses so that our prototype could solve this problem.
To understand our users’ pain points, we conducted interviews and surveys with people who have tried to learn a foreign language.
For those who tried to learn a language online, 70% of people struggled with conversational speaking.
In our interviews, many people mentioned apps like Duolingo for being flexible and fun. However, all interview participants said that language apps are great for learning vocabulary and grammar but didn’t help them with their conversational skills. The main findings from our interviews were:
- Language apps don’t prepare students for conversations
- Apps don’t teach useful topics for real-life situations
- Immersion is necessary for fluency in a foreign language
We then continued with our Competitor Analysis to figure out where we could position ourselves int the market.
Our analysis helped us determine the strengths, weaknesses, and features of other online language learning platforms.
We found that there was a gap in the market for an online experience that was educational, focused on human conversations, and had content that was personalized to our users’ interests.
Based on our problem statement and research, we prioritized 3 features for our online platform.
- Live classes with human teachers to facilitate conversations
- Flexible time schedule
- Customized content so that students can learn about what’s relevant to them
Once we prioritized our features with the MOSCOW prioritization technique, we created a user flow for on-boarding and started sketching. We started with paper wireframes and iterated on these. After some user testing, we moved to InVision Freehand, and then finally to Sketch.
Due to time constraints since we had 5 days for this project, we did our product in mid-fi. You can check a short video of our mid-fi below.
Next Steps
For the next steps, we will need to create iterations of the scheduling feature and test with users and teachers.
- How much flexibility should we give our users without overwhelming them with too many options?
- How do the teachers play into this? Does this model work for them?
- When do you choose your schedule? What about if you have to miss a class?
Learnings
With this project, I learned how to work on Feature Prioritization and how to use the MOSCOW technique.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!
