Appeal to learners without looking like a sales platform?
Stay on top of trends in remote learning platforms and product offerings
Be the go-to link for creative courses, all mediums and skill levels
Engage through marketing analytics and digital media campaigns
Offer the first course free
Market through social media demos and influencers
Offer collaborative or team-based subscriptions
Host design and creativity conferences
Offer fresh course offerings
Build curriculum as community
Offer loyalty discounts, badges and incentives
Pursue ad-hoc demos and workshops, art and design competitions, host teaser workshops
Create opportunities for pulling together creative individuals, teams and organizations and growing learner advocacy.
High Priority User Stories
1
User stories
Priority
2
"I want to learn a new creative skill so that I can grow and evolve as a creative."
High
3
"I want to learn a digital design application so I can use it effectively in my work."
High
4
"I want to search for workshops, art competitions or artists’ communities by location so that I can participate locally or on a creative retreat / trip."
Launch → Search and view courses?→ Select a course, view course?→ Add to card?→ Add credit card and purchase?→ Start Course & and view all it’s content and discussions?→ Complete Course
- - -
Flow 2 Registered User / Sign in, Resume Course OR Search, View and Add a Course
Launch → Google sign on → View Dashboard → Resume Course (e.g., trous jours a Arles) → Course Playlist → Complete Course → Rate Course
ALTERNATIVE FLOW (not prototyped) → View my Courses or View Settings → Edit and Save Settings
Design Notes
We demonstrated both the mockups and code-less prototype to two potential/target customers.
What worked well.
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.
The easy part: Since creativity is our bag of goods, we can easily spot quality of design and art instruction and detect the strength?and weaknesses of competitors.
What didn’t work well.
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 trends 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.
The road ahead: 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.
Roles Matrix
Collaborative and cross functional efforts
1
OPERATIONAL ROLES
2
VISUAL DESIGN (TEAM)
Branding guidelines, voice, style guide, data visualization, design library, and visual design development
3
ENGINEERING (TEAM)
Features build out, enhancements, technical specs
Note: Plan for a team 6-7, 2 for back end systems, 2 for front end design, 1 for video platform and 1 tasked with integration efforts
4
UX TESTING
Features and functionality testing, user surveys, feedback and research, iterative design enhancementsNote: for objectivity, use a third party or separate individual / team for user testing
5
CONTENT WRITERS
Product voice, personality and collaboration with marketing initiatives
6
CREATIVE CONTENT PARTNERS
Produce initial instructional video content
7
MEDIA PARTNERS
YouTube, Vimeo and other video platform developers, and creative applications / tooling
Notes: to provide a collateral demos, future will be 100% user/instructor generated content
There are no rows in this table
1
PARTNER ROLES
2
UX TESTING
Features and functionality testing, user surveys, feedback and research, iterative design enhancements??Note: for objectivity, use a third party or separate individual / team for user testing
3
INSTRUCTIONAL CONTENT WRITERS
Product voice, personality and collaboration with marketing initiatives
4
CREATIVE CONTENT PARTNERS
Produce initial instructional video content
5
MEDIA PARTNERS
YouTube, Vimeo and other video platform developers, and creative applications / tooling
Note: to provide a collateral demos, future will be 100% user/instructor generated content
There are no rows in this table
PART FOUR
Minimum Viable Product
Overview Introduction & Goal
A multi-viewpoint application that presents learners with creative skills courses and resources.
Virtual, live or recorded video instruction
Instructor-generated content, predominantly video tutorials and live webcasts
Mobile first
Enables users to grow a creative network, seek support, mentorship and build relationships with their peers.
WHO: The 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.?Creatives seeking quick turnaround/full immersion training to freshen or broaden their creative skills sets ?Creatives seeking to update their tools, and expand knowledge, creative and technical skills, and / or seeking a beginning or mid-career change?
WHAT: The Problem to be Solved
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
Solution
Google or single-sign on
Multiple viewpoint/downloadable mobile application
Initially free to all users
Learners can conduct quick and easy search for creative video courses.
Live, virtual or recording video instruction.
Free trial/optional subscription-based offering
Wide variety of classes to choose from
Optional profile, notifications and creative network, ratings, share and community?
Features
1
Onboarding
Engagement
2
Profile & Settings Notifications?Browse courses
Customization
3
Notifications
Learning Platform
4
Browse Courses and view details
Learning Platform
5
Save courses
Learning Platform
6
Buy course
Learning Platform
7
Asynchronous video-based learning platform and course progress indicators, up to one year access
How we’ll be different: The creative projects features in most other offerings are compelling and fun, but our goal would be to serve a wider creative audience, wider range of courses, 1-3 day live workshops uploaded from anywhere in in the world and offer live virtual instruction, class ratings, art & design competition hosting and socialization.
How could it succeed?
Long term customer retention
Subscriptions and media campaigns
New courses, fresh content
What could lead to a user no longer using your product
Member- generated course content
Subscription-based, conversion, return customers.
No commitment
Risks / How could it fail?
Collateral and course quality, volume, diversity of selection vs. learner expectation
Failure of instructor content to generate self supporting revenues
Stale content, incomplete courses, drop offs, back outs and poor customer testimonials and reviews. Members are learners and instructors
Learners without all the latest technology on hand may struggle to ramp up and quit before they actually have the opportunity to benefit from e-learning coursework
eLearners, especially social and verbal learners do not progress well without connection with other learners, mentors and assistive teams
Course completion rates provide essential red flags that the course may be too rigorous but do not highlight specific measured touch points or roadblocks. Daily individual stand-ups were implemented for a short time but these became overly time consuming.
Overall progress scores - a module by module completion rate might be more effective.
Grading team assessments of effort, productivity and creativity, which is a subjective measurement, resulting in varied opinions and inconsistencies across the grading team.
OKRs and KPIs
Synchronous and asynchronous learning
Free introductory workshops and short term trial subscriptions
Full immersion courses completed within 6 months
Flexible coursework for those challenged with time management
Skill-based instruction with specific outcome expectations.
Focused on “How-to” and real world application
Mentoring, discussion forums and support
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. We are going to design for time constraints so that we 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.?
Success metrics, baseline, target, time frame
KPIs: % of users engaged through workshops
% of new subscribers from free 30-day trial
% of new subscribers from first “course free”?
Skills surveys and assessment during workshops?
Click through rate or cost per click
Target: 5,000 new course registrants post release
Time frame: 6 months / Another 10,000 in 12 mo
Mitigation through key metrics and analytics
Conversion rate = (conversions / total visitors) * 100%?Total volume of new subscribers relative to completion rates?% of learners who submit favorable reviews?Avg. # of new users referred per active user?Quantitative & site usage analytics / Average # of new & onboarded users. . .
Onboarding metrics
Completing a purchase
Saving for later
Abandoning purchase
Querying courses & beginning social engagement
Creating a profile (either paid or free—like a newsletter)
Direct vs. redirect registering on the e-learning site
Downloading resources / free course materials, etc.
Return customers and/or upgrades? Overall time per module, sticking points and related support requests? Issue severity level
PART SIX
Product Roadmap
Initial build sequence plan
2021:
Q1: Learner analytics, research
Q2: Develop and instructional video platform
Q3: Onboarding, member/learner profile and settings.