CourseSpark is a library of engaging videos that enables instructional designers to enhance their digital products.
Project Overview
Imagine completing an e-learning course that consists entirely of text content... That would be so dull and overwhelming! Boclips is a company on a mission to make learning more engaging.
They maintain a vast library of educational videos dedicated to large publishing companies that are transitioning from traditional book publishing to digital learning platforms.
They maintain a vast library of educational videos dedicated to large publishing companies that are transitioning from traditional book publishing to digital learning platforms.
Before I joined the team, there was minimal knowledge regarding the users and their needs.
In addition, the main user-facing platform required redesign as it had severe usability issues and was presenting obstacles to product sales.
In addition, the main user-facing platform required redesign as it had severe usability issues and was presenting obstacles to product sales.
My role
User research
UX design & prototyping
Workshop facilitation
Results
Redesigned and improved version of the main app
Established user research repository
Created a company-wide Design System
How we handled the redesign
It was a long and challenging process, filled with UX activities!
The world of instructional designers
Videos as an essential part of digital learning
With the popularity of YouTube and the rise of TikTok, teaching approaches are changing, affecting also educators who need to incorporate more dynamic resources to keep students engaged. Instructional designers play a crucial role here - they carefully curate videos from a variety of sources or create custom-made videos.
You can think of them as the professor's right hand - the one who stays up to date with teaching approaches and recommend how to present your material in an informative and enjoyable way. They also design activities and assignments that are aligned with the learning objectives and the selected video content.
You can think of them as the professor's right hand - the one who stays up to date with teaching approaches and recommend how to present your material in an informative and enjoyable way. They also design activities and assignments that are aligned with the learning objectives and the selected video content.
Meet Riley, our main user persona
Why redesign was critical?
"I was a little disappointed by what we found here. When you’re describing the platform it sounds really great but in reality, it’s difficult to find what you want, or even if you do then it’s from a super-pricey provider - what is it, “The School of Life”?"
The main goal of Boclips library is to ease the process of finding, embedding, and licensing high-quality educational videos into courses. However, the initial version of the app was very disappointing to our users and, to be honest, to everyone in the company. Quickly built out of an outdated stock platform template it was incapable of showcasing the best content and was difficult to sell. We also had very limited knowledge about the user's workflow and search expectations.
The first part of the redesign project was to conduct interviews with the sales team, internal experts, and external end-users. It allowed us to better understand their work and various internal processes that need to be followed. Additionally, to identify the pain points they encounter while collecting additional course content or showcasing our platform.
The first part of the redesign project was to conduct interviews with the sales team, internal experts, and external end-users. It allowed us to better understand their work and various internal processes that need to be followed. Additionally, to identify the pain points they encounter while collecting additional course content or showcasing our platform.
Old B2B platform version with a discouraging amount of low-quality results
It's impossible to quickly find relevant videos
The library was intended to be a convenient tool and a time-saver, but most users found it unsatisfactory. In order to find anything they needed to rely solely on search which often yielded an overwhelming amount of irrelevant results. The inability to explore was the biggest issue, but they were also disappointed with the lack of guidance & how to use our videos in the best possible way. Our platform was perceived as just another stock app rather than a serious educational resource. All this was quite disheartening as they have a genuine need to increase the number of educational videos included in their courses.
"I get a lot of what look like amateur videos. I was looking for something professional, whereas there were a lot of interviews on the red carpet etc. with terrible quality. Part of using that platform is knowing the sources"
One of my favorite spotted examples of irrelevant search results. The number of videos was overwhelming and definitely not showcasing educational value (as stock video content was prioritized on the platform..)
Course creation is a team effort
While Instructional Designers make the effort of searching for additional resources, they need to consult everything with subject matter experts and project managers (to agree on the content selection & confirm the course budget). The only way to do this was via sharing the links to individual videos on Slack or compiling them in multiple docs. To most of them, it was regarded as a tedious process, since newer platforms offer a broader range of collaboration features.
During the interviews, Instructional Designers shared with us sample documents where they keep links to all promising resources and guided us through their decision-making process. At the same time, our sales team relied heavily on spreadsheets to showcase our content capabilities to potential customers. Definitely not an XXI-century experience :)
Defining strategy and scope
The Discovery phase made it easier to define the scope for the project. Apart from interviews we also dug into data and analyzed various patterns apparent in search queries. With all the collected insights, I decided to start a discussion with our leaders & sales team on how to optimize the value we deliver.
Due to Covid lockdown, I facilitated our first strategy workshops entirely remotely -
I distributed various activities across smaller groups and set time each day to gather together, discuss the outcomes of exercises, and decide on the next steps.
We spent a lot of time discussing the most pressing problems and prioritizing ideas. Storyboarding and sketching were also vital and for the 1st time reviewed on cameras!
Reimagining educational library
Home screen and new search layout
During the MVP phase, we didn't introduce many changes to the home screen, except for incorporating some good practices for search UX.
The search results page deserved the most critical rethinking & redesign:
Iterating on search experience
Regular user testing and monitoring search metrics were our basis to progress beyond the MVP stage. While the new simple UI and search results page were perceived as refreshed and user-friendly, we still didn't improve the search success. Thanks to user interviews, diary studies, and consultation with taxonomy experts, we decided to introduce new custom content categorization.
Our goal was to facilitate the users to browse through our videos with ease and gain inspiration for future courses.
Our goal was to facilitate the users to browse through our videos with ease and gain inspiration for future courses.
We often organize various brainstorming and sketching sessions at Boclips. Our dev team especially like them because they can share their own ideas and make an impact. I turn the most promising ideas into prototypes that could be later tested with users.
A first developed version of flow & UI for new Subjects navigation.
Smooth collaboration with playlists
"Sometimes I research videos at night and watch them in the morning. I would then take a long look when I have time and see if they’re useful. If I could share the playlist with my writing partner that would also be really useful"
From the beginning of the project, we knew that we need to have a space for team collaboration - where instructional designers could gather videos, invite collaborators, and together decide which resources to choose. At the same time, our sales team and internal experts need a flexible solution to create curated collections that can be easily shared with prospects. Such a small and simple feature significantly impacted our product adoption and influenced the sales process.
Introducing BoSystem
Our redesign efforts led also to establish one source of truth for all interactive components - a proper Design System. Together with another designer, we spent 3 weeks transforming our MVP style guide into the new library, making sure all the components are accessible and the entire app is WCAG 2.1 compliant. We aimed to build a working library that would speed up the design process while fostering a shared language and understanding of design across a company. As a result, our marketing and sales team was able to update their decks and materials to achieve a similar look & feel. The word "BoSystem" became also a new term in our Boclips vocabulary.
Have a look at our Design System!
Thanks to the Design System I was able to quickly update all the components and easily maintain app consistency
Taking care of qualitative data
using a research repository
using a research repository
Throughout the entire redesign project, we conducted numerous user sessions and diary studies. In the beginning, we were collecting interview notes in docs, running affinity mapping exercises in Miro, and documenting research findings in slides or the company wiki... Both I and the rest of the team were overwhelmed and tired while analyzing qualitative research and at the same time, it felt that we were missing out on a lot of important data from the previous studies.
After testing different research repositories, I decided to start using Dovetail and create one space for documenting and navigating different types of qualitative research. Eventually, we stopped taking notes during interviews and started tagging transcripts instead, according to established tagging taxonomy. At the end of each research, I compiled key insights in the form of short blog posts that were reviewed not only by our product team but also by salespeople - everyone wanted to know the users thoughts and now getting the newest information was easier than ever. What I really like about Dovetail, is that it breaks down the original videos into smaller chunks - so when someone reviews my insights they don't have to rely solely on my synthesis, but can also watch what the users have to say.
Easily digestible research findings in the form of short blog posts
Reflections
Redesigning our main B2B application has been a long and challenging journey as it took us almost 12 months to deliver the first simple version of the product. I'm really proud of my influence on the whole project as the research results were regularly used to impact the roadmap. Also thanks to the new design and features we were able to gain new large customers who were satisfied and impressed with our services. Looking at this redesign from today's perspective, I wish we had spent more time in the beginning on implementing more creative and innovative search patterns, but luckily we were given the chance to experiment a bit in later stages.
