Challenge
During my first week at Learningbank, I got an onboarding task to identify “low-hanging fruit” UX improvements that could take the product quality up a notch.
But as I tested the platform, it became clear to me a few tweaks wasn’t going to cut it. Rather than solving small usability issues and using three weeks of development, I believed we needed to think bigger.
Rather than solving small usability issues and using three weeks of development, I believed we needed to think bigger.
Discovery
I needed to know who I would be improving for before being able to say what should be improved and how. Problem was, data was scarce. So I worked with what I had: a survey that had just gone out to one of our biggest clients (29 responses — thin, but it was our biggest customer and matched our core audience, so I decided it would suffice) together with insights from colleagues.
Then the analytics threw me a curveball: desktop was clearly winning on traffic. But numbers alone don’t tell you why—data shows behavior, not preference. For example, the dashboard looked like the obvious (and sexiest) place to focus, but it wasn’t where the actual value was. The “learning flow” was—on mobile.
Young, Digital, Mobile
My initial assumption was around 60% of “learners” (end users) were up to ~30 years of age, and the majority of them prefer being mobile.
Especially employees in retail, hospitality and production companies rely largely on mobile devices as they don’t necessarily have access to desktops. A mobile phone is the quickest way to take the lessons and get right back to work.
But my own, first experience taking lessons left much to be desired. It was clear the functionality and design wasn’t optimised for mobile – something as intuitive as simply swiping between lesson slides wasn’t possible.
Strategy
If we apply the 80/20 principle and say “learners” spend 80% of their time in 20% of the system mainly taking lessons, and since more than half of these “learners” are mobile, if we focus on optimising the “learning flow” on mobile, we would potentially improve 80% of the user experience for 60% of users.
Optimising the “learning flow” on mobile would potentially improve 80% of the user experience for 60% of users.
Goals
- Increase traffic from mobile devices. We had a 30% mobile 70% desktop split which I suspected didn’t match the number of users who actually wanted to be mobile.
- Increase the number of lessons completed. With new initiatives to nudge users into courses, we should see a rise in the number of lessons completed.
- Solve the initial issues from the survey sent to our big client. We’d follow up on whether we solved it by sending out a new, similar one.
Improve the Mobile Experience
Improve the Personal Experience
Improve the Learning Experience
Contribution
- Put together the arguments and examples of a new mobile focus and strategy that convinced the leadership team
- Redesigned the end-to-end experience for both the app and administration
- Established a Design System to support long-term product development and consistency in the experience.
- Collaborated with the Customer Success lead to ensure customer value
- Worked closely with development to prioritise and implement the redesign
- Built a shared understanding of the product vision across the team
Outcome
The redesigned platform launched for end users in May 2019 though originally planned for design work to begin in Q2. Following the launch, Learningbank recorded the highest number of completed lessons in the platform’s history at the time. A new, matching redesign for administrators was implemented shortly after in July, greatly improving the experience for the people building lessons.
Following the launch, we recorded the highest number of completed lessons in the platform’s history at the time
The decision did not only cover a new strategy and redesign–the codebase was also updated to the latest technology, becoming a much stronger foundation in more than just pixels.
Now a Workforce Enablement Platform, this redesign from 2019 established the strategic and technical foundation on which the product rests today.
Learnings
I would have liked to have more time to properly chat with clients and colleagues, especially in the Customer Success team. But the strategy I presented resonated well with Learningbank’s leadership team. I later confirmed the new focus with clients who were very happy with the mobile-first approach.
It’s important to shape a product for the clients you have—but also important to shape it for clients you want to have.
This is a rewritten version of my case study article about redesigning Learningbank’s Learning Management Platform from 2019 – read the original and full article here.