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The Depot
Education
Portal
An educational platform focused on creating efficiency in the lives of busy professionals looking to make a career pivot.
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Timeline
Three Weeks
My Role
Project Manager
Content Strategist
UX Designer
Tools
Figma
Miro
InVision
The Problem
01
Educational bootcamps need efficient ways to store/manage resources like links that are shared.
02
Students spend too much time navigating platforms like Slack or Drive, looking for links and other resources.
03
Tradeoff: Students spend too much time on administrative tasks like logging in instead of core learning tasks.
The Solution
A one-stop platform to house all resources shared during a course, with clear hierarchy and efficient organization:
My Role: Project Manager
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Daily standups:
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Reviewed progress daily and weekly, creating and utilizing a weekly takeaway sheet that helped in writing our case study.
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Progress Tracking:
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Utilized Trello to monitor progress and set deadlines. Helped move our group forward by being the final decision maker.
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Organization:
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​​Created an efficient workspace (i.e. well-structured folder system in Drive and pages in Figma).
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Research
We chose a three-prong research approach that consisted of 1:1 interviews, a 19-question survey, and an informal focus group.
Constraints:
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Short, 3-week time frame
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Research pool limited to members of our current UX/UI Bootcamp
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Some of the findings were too course-specific for an universally applicable education platform
Interviews
6
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The tools and resources that students are using are spread across multiple platforms
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Users want some autonomy in dashboard layout
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The class video library feels hidden, and is a pain point for current students
6
Focus Group Participants
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Pain point for students is that they wished for better pre-class preparation with concepts
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Weekly heat map revealed students use current portal for admin tasks rather than as a one-stop resource
Surveys
16
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62% had a bachelors, and had experience with online learning
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56% of respondents access the Portal 1-2 times a week
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56% accessed Google Drive or Slack 7 or more times a week
One insight that captured all our attention was the amount of external resources each student had to access in order to get resources they needed. This reduced the portal for students to merely an administrative function that added little value to their overall learning.
Meet our user, Joan! We created a story board of a day in the life of this busy professional. As she researches concepts shared in class, she is able to navigate the helpful course materials tab to find relevant instructions. She is also able to share a helpful article she found online to her classmates in the same portal space. This is the kind of streamlined learning process she needs as she balances school with her full time job.
Define
Meet Joan Gingham
Joan works as a marketing manager, and decided to sign up for a virtual boot camp while continuing to work full time. She's a woman on the go, and need this experience to be as painless as possible!
Needs: To make a career pivot into a higher paying job in the most efficient way possible that doesn't add to her workload
Frustrations: Balancing current job with course work
Ideate
Feature Prioritization
We brainstormed many ways to make the learning process efficient for Joan, through the feature prioritization matix and the following activities:
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I like, I wish, What if
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User flow
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Task flows (before & after)
Impact
Create separate Career Milestones space from HW milestones
Color code calendar
All course materials were saved in the portal & avail for download
Support page to include onboarding?
Better way to share, filter, store, and organize resources
Internal instant messaging system
"Hold my hand" toggle
Effort
Progress bars and badges for completing lessons
My contribution in this phase was leading discussions, timeboxing the group to make sure we were able to move forward, polling the group and assigning tasks that needed to be completed, and following up to see if my team needed any assistance completing tasks.
Task Flows
We drew on our own experience and frustrations when searching for resources to create an existing task flow.
As you can see, Joan wastes a lot of time trying to find resources in multiple platforms.
Existing Flow
In our reimagined task flow, we created a single place to replace the need for external platforms like Google or Slack. Now Joan knows if it is a class resource, she can find it in the efficiently organized Resource tab on the Depot platform.
Streamlined Flow
Sketching
As we moved into the prototyping stage, we submitted sketches and redlined inspiration dashboards for components to include. I reviewed and redlined all sketches, then presented my top takeaways to the group. Our primary focus was creating a one-stop platform for all the resources Joan will need during her bootcamp.
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Wireframing
We held many discussions about the resources page, as that would be the hub that would make Joan’s educational experience a success. We chose elements from all the redlined sketches to create a wireframe:
Testing
As we ramped up fidelity, we wanted to ensure that the background/foreground combinations of text and color met accessibility standards. We chose to test navigation as well as content labels, and our results gave us a green light to move forward with the current design.
My Contribution: As we focused our design on a clearly organized tab structure to make Joan’s experience effortless, I conducted A/B testing on our navigation design. I timed users as we asked them to complete two tasks:
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Add a Resource
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Can you tell me what tab you are on?
A
B
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Results:
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On average for site A, Task one took 21 seconds, and task two took 9.5 seconds.
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On average for site B, Task one took 5.5 seconds, and task two took 2 seconds.
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Task 1 took about 4x as long on the A site as it did on the B site
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Task 2 took about 5x as long on the A site as it did on the B site
Prototyping
We chose a dark mode background to reduce eyestrain, since Joan is taking this course at night. We contrasted with bold colors to increase accessibility.
My input on this page was including the career readiness & skills assesment modals
One thing we learned in the research phase was a desire for customizable resources based on the users skill or comfort level. We created an assessment for Joan to update as she progressed in the course.
This assessment will inform what resources are recommended to Joan as she progresses through her education journey.
My input on this page was the tab structure, which came from my sketches. We all liked that impression of a filing system for Joan.
Mobile Prototype
Since Joan is taking this course during a busy season of life, she needs access to the portal on the go. We created a responsive solution for her to check in that is more convenient.
What's Next
Build interactivity to bring Joan to resources used and shared that day. We also want to explore the idea of syncing with personal calendars.
Calendar
Joan will value a simple, well-organized platform to aid in her career pivot. We want to build a page that includes a career progress tracker.
Career Services
We would love to test light mode versus dark, advanced search button placement, and the interactivity for the skills assessment results.
Further Testing
We discussed a whole other side of the portal dedicated to the instructors. This will entail another round of research and testing.