The Challenge
"Be the go-to link for virtual, synchronous / asynchronous creative arts courses for all mediums and skill levels."
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. . . build curriculum as community.
Offer a fresh alternative to creative course offerings, build curriculum as community, host instructional video, and create opportunities for pulling together creative individuals, teams and organizations.
. . . appeal to learners without looking like a sales platform.
Tailor courses to individual needs, skill levels, creative goals, provide virtual coaching and commit to learner advocacy.
. . . invent a new platform for creative learning, accessible anywhere.
Provide the ease and convenience of virtual learning as well as a connective environment for all arts, skill levels and creative interests.
Insights
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What is the customer need? 100% remote, asynchronous, accessible learning for artists, designers, and career changers. Assistive technologies, vision braille, voice recognition, live captioning, alt text?for images, searchable keywords, screen recording, voice-over descriptions.
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UX deliverables
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A multi-viewpoint application that presents learners with creative skills courses and resources.
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Mobile first with virtual, live or recorded video instruction
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Instructor-generated content, predominantly video tutorials and live webcasts
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Enables users to grow a creative network, seek support, mentorship and build relationships with their peers.
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Who is our customer? Artists and designers of all levels, 18 years or older, location and demographic-diverse? Creative learners seeking relevant, relatable, retainable instructional content that reflects the learner’s greatest potential.
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Value-driven goals
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Easily accessible, affordable, 100% remote, self-paced, relevant, relatable and retainable e-learning platform that features workshops for artists, designers and community with other creatives
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Help students realize their potential; help creative growth educators solve the challenges of developing effective e-learning programs by designing for, and advocating for new-age e-learners.
Pain points
Mind Mapping
MEETING THE CUSTOMER NEED
Ideation
POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
Customer Journey
INSTRUCTION, LEARNING AND LEARNING SUPPORT
What will we build?
DEFINING THE LEARNER SUCCESS STORY
IDEA OR OPPORTUNITY
Create a relevant, relatable and retainable e-learning platform that features workshops for artists, designers, and community with other creatives.
Feature a variety of creative mediums and experience levels
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FRAMEWORK
A new e-learning product that will train creatives seeking to gain marketable skills and knowledge in a variety of mediums and experience levels.
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Research
ATTRIBUTES OF COMMUNITY BASED LEARNING
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Lifelong learning. Education is a birth-to-death process, and everyone in the community shares in the responsibility of educating all members of the community. Formal and informal learning opportunities should be available to residents of all ages in a wide variety of community settings.
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Self-determination. Community residents have a right and a responsibility to be involved in assessing community needs and identifying community resources that can be used to address those needs.
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Self-help. People are best served by their leaders when their capacity to help themselves is acknowledged and developed. When people assume responsibility for their own well-being, they achieve some degree of independence.
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Leadership development. Training local leaders in problem solving, decision-making, and group-process skills is essential to community improvement efforts.
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Institutional responsiveness. Because public institutions exist to serve the public, they are obligated to develop programs and services that address constantly changing public needs and interests.
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Integrated delivery of services. Organizations and agencies that operate for the public good can best use their limited resources, meet their own goals, and serve the public by collaborating with organizations and agencies with similar goals and purposes.
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Maximum use of resources. The physical, financial, and human resources of every community should be fully available and rationally interconnected if the diverse needs and interests of the community are to be met.
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Inclusiveness. Community programs, activities, and services should involve the broadest possible cross-section of community residents without segregation by age, income, sex, race, ethnicity, religion, or other characteristics.
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Product Hypotheses
PROBLEM I
"Engaging the creative learner."
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PROPOSED SOLUTION
Help creative growth educators solve the challenges of developing effective e-learning programs by designing for, and advocating for new-age e-learners.? Free introductory workshops and short term trial subscriptions.
PROBLEM II
"Creatives are seeking quick turnaround/full immersion training to freshen or broaden their creative skills sets -- with flexible coursework for those challenged with time management."
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PROPOSED SOLUTION
Design for environmental constraints and accessibility so that we help students realize their potential. Creatives seeking to update their tools, and expand knowledge, creative and technical skills, and / or seeking a beginning or mid-career change?
PROBLEM III
"Easily accessible, affordable, 100% remote, self-paced, relevant, relatable and retainable e-learning platform that features workshops for artists, designers, and community with other creatives."
PROPOSED SOLUTION
Nine categories, and high volume of courses; instructor/author generated and uploaded; browse courses / recommendations
Personas
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Relevant Trends
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Curriculum as a community Online collaboration and teamwork
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User Generated Content
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Learners develop content and share it with their peers.
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Mobile Friendly online course platforms Ability to learn anywhere in real time
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Smart Content Creation Expertly designed user journeys
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Virtual Conferencing
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Live education platforms, virtual learning vs at a physical location
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Learning Analytics
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Program instructors and education success teams use data analytics to track how students perform. They monitor learners progress, gather feedback and adjust the curriculum as needed.
Community Based Learning
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KPIs: % of users engaged through workshops
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% of new subscribers from free 30-day trial
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% of new subscribers from first “course free”?
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Skills surveys and assessment during workshops?
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Click through rate or cost per click
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Target: 5,000 new course registrants post release
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Time frame: 6 months / Another 10,000 in 12 mo
High level user flow
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Awareness
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Engagement
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Buy-in
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Preparation
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Initiation, beginning, undergoing and completing
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Acquire knowledge and skills
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Build and sustain memory
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Reflect and explore
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Interactive video
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Rapidly rising trend in video
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Learning support and guidance
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The instructional design or e-learning team will become the unsung hero in many organizations
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Micro-Learning, boot camp and immersion programs
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Learning in digestible chunks, with the goal to train faster and teach specific skills
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AI, AR, VR, MR and VUIS
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As a user being influenced by advances in technology such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, virtual user interfaces are expected to attract more attention.
Onboarding
→ Launch
→ Tap logo
→ Sign in or Create Account or Reset Password/Sign in with Google
choose course
→ Login
→ *
→ Search
→ Enter keyword, tap Search
→ Displays itemized list of search results
→ Select a course
→ Select BUY
→ Complete purchase
→ Purchase confirmed
→ Buy Course
complete course
→ Login
→ View Dashboard
→ Resume Course
→ Course Playlist
→ Connect
→ Chat
personalize
→ Login
→ Dashboard /Create a Profile
→ Displays Courses
→ Displays Recommended Courses
→ Access to Assistance
→ Chat
Key flows
STEPS TO REPRODUCE
Flexible Framework
First iteration
Hi Fidelity Mockups
Style Library
Additional Iterations
Personalization & learner advocacy.
Profile &
Save for Later
Vincent the Virtual Assistant
Retrospective
eLearning standards and principles were established around 2005; however, design approaches for the student experience continually evolves so that it becomes more versatile and applicable to all types of learners. To validate the effectiveness of instructional design practicum and e-learning experience design requires rigorous testing and letting go of the the way solutions "have always been designed before." Going forward, a more effective approach will be to balance our knowledge base for e-learning technologies with new and innovative approaches in instructional design.
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eLearning trends are also fast-moving, and we're reminded with each new challenge that projects of an educational nature require constant, iterative methodology reviews and user research to maintain quality solutions and the core value proposition.
MY ROLE: PRODUCT MANAGER AND UX DESIGN PRACTITIONER
FEEDBACK ON THIS PROJECT IS WELCOME!
What Worked
As a design community, we're taking on the challenge of learning and applying new remote, virtual e-learning trends, research methods, practice and principles and getting acquainted with all the ins and outs of e-learning platforms, specific to creative arts subject matter and also with flexibility for varied learning styles.
What Didn't
Work
As with everything new, it’s challenges that move our designs and engineering forward. What we thought would be a simple solution may well increase in complexity as e-learning platform trends and technologies grow and evolve. We're confident we can solve and resolve, by offering our learners greater density and breadth of course offerings, quality instruction, easy virtual/anywhere access, and inexpensive to purchase. Plus extras, such as creative community, social, sharing, and by hosting national and local art and design competitions.
What we discovered
eLearning has been a huge market opportunity during, and will continue beyond the pandemic. The greater challenge is moving away from legacy systems and even the current standard platforms, adapting newer trends, instructional design practicum and e-learning experience design, and growing our knowledge base for e-learning technologies, and e-learning.
The path ahead
"Next is the easy part: Since creativity is our bag of goods, we can easily spot quality of design and art instruction and detect the strengths and weaknesses of competitors."
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