Be A Maker Club is a 3D Modeling/Printing course that is perfect for creatives of any age and level of knowledge. For the last year BAMC had to change their in-person teaching style to online. Initially, I was asked to come up with gamification ideas to keep users engaged and keep their focus on accomplishing 43 video classes. After the second meeting with Zeff I discovered that the company doesn’t get any new sign-ups and current users don’t sign up for paid plans instead using free one which makes it hard for the business to grow, keep teachers at a fair compensation and maintain equipment up to date.
Overview
Role: UX Researcher, Interaction Designer
Team: Peter Glanting, Khooshali Magoo
Tools: Figma, Slack, Monday.com, Zoom, Trello
Timeline: 3 week sprint
Stage - Discover: Interviews/Survey/Usability Testing
We started our research phase with interviews. We created a survey and invited current students/parents to have an interview with us over the Zoom. We asked users about the BAMC’s new online model, paid plans aka membership and overall feeling about this course. We also decided to conduct usability tests with new users to get their first impression. We asked them to start the course, sign up for a free plan and finish the first class.
- I have to sit through the whole lesson with them (kids) and do it with them which is really time consuming. My kids found some videos are overwhelming, they had to pause and re-watch.
- My kids’ skill levels are all different. It's not practical for me to have my kids do it like as a group together.
- I went through the website, I really wasn't able to find answers to any of my questions.
- If we can find a way to have my kids to be able to engage in a cost effective way that I don't have to invest so many hours per week in.
- I can’t find any info on the instructors.
- It was hard to find “my account’ on the bottom of the page.
- I guess I was already on the membership page when I was clicking enroll, and then it was just basically reloading that page. So it seemed confusing.
- I don’t understand membership. It’s a quite vague explanation.
- I'm navigating to the course, how the courses would differ with these different memberships?
Memorable quotes (Interviews)
Memorable quotes (Usability Test)
Once we collected all the information, it was clear that most of the issues were due to poor navigation/design, lack of copy. Gamification elements were absent on the website what made younger users less interacted with classes that resulted in quitting a class.
Stage - Discover:
C&C Analysis
We also compared BAMC to other e-learning courses to better understand e-learning models and find design inspiration. I signed up for competitors classes and compared their onboarding process.
Here are some findings that our competitors were missing,
we wanted to use in our prototype:
- Introduction to courses and membership, how it works and what to expect
- Personalized onboarding process to navigate users to the right content.
- Classes classification (by level of complexity/knowledge)
- Certification or any type of incentive after completing a course
- Support from an instructor (chat box)
Stage - Define:
User Personas
We created two personas based off of user interviews and usability tests: a student and a parent. Each of the personas faces different issues. Let’s start with a student:
Carl is living his best 9-year-old life in Upland, California. Rambunctious but creative.
In the last few years, Carl’s become immersed in STEM programs, too, both in and out of school. Carl wants to continue to learn and become a next level maker, but there are so many other things competing for a 9 year-old’s attention.
Core Needs
• Carl needs to pay attention in class, but he also needs to have fun and remain engaged.
• Carl needs to become a next-level maker, but sometimes it's hard to finish a class without the help of his mom or an instructor.
Frustrations
• It’s hard to stay engaged in an online class.
• Some classes more difficult than others. There is no way to sort them.
• Carl wants to work on HIS projects, but the teacher is doing a different project in class.
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Dr. Gray is a Cardiologist in the city hospital. She’s also a single mom of 2 kids: a boy, Mike, (8) and a girl, Sandra (12). She has an irregular working schedule so she doesn’t have as much time to manage her children’s after school activities as she’d like.
Core Needs
• Dr. Gray needs her kids to stay engaged in their after school courses so she has a time for herself.
• Dr. Gray needs to enroll her kids in classes that are easy to use and offer different levels of difficulty.
Frustrations
• There is no way to start off her son with easy-level classes. If a class is too hard for him, he is more likely to give up
• She doesn’t have time to sit down and help the kids with their projects.
• It’s hard to remember and manage online memberships.
Problem Statement
Dr. Gray needs a course that will satisfy her kids so that they’re engaged, self sufficient, and they acquire important academic skills.
Carl needs a way to stay engaged and so he can learn to become a next level maker, but there are so many other things competing for a 9 year-old’s attention.
This customer journey map accurately represents how our students and their parents feel while signing up and taking a class. This journey map included all the pitfalls we discovered in our research.
Stage - Develop:
Information Architecture/ Sketching
Having our personas in mind and theirs main pain-points we started brainstorming solutions. First of all, we redesigned an old information architecturebased on research results. We discovered that some important information that our users were interested in, such as how does the course work, what does membership mean and who the instructors are is simply hard to find on the website.
This new site map prioritizes the important information users search for when trying to register for the class. That should also make navigating the site a more intuitive experience.
We started with rough sketches at first. Our team did design sprint for each page with all necessary changes in it.
After thoroughly sketching and wireframing, we arrived at a mid fidelity prototype that we could test with users.
Stage - Develop:
Usability Tests
Usability test tasks:
Fiddle with the prototype.
You want to sign-up for a 3d printing class and finish any class you like. Share your thoughts out loud.
You want to learn how to make the Mandalorian Helmet and print it.
Usability test questions:
Tell me about your experience.
What met and didn’t meet your expectations?
At what points did you know what to do and what points were you unsure what to do?
As a parent, how likely would you be to sign your child up for a course through this site?
Usability test findings:
Negative feedbacks:
The buttons are too big and incoherent throughout the website.
Information boxes on the checkout page are large.
The font size is too big and disproportionate.
Users found the flow of the video courses somewhat confusing, particularly when it comes time to submit 3D printable files to BAMC at the end of a course.
Positive quotes:
“Website now is pretty straightforward”
“I like trial membership instead the one that was named ‘silver’”
“Having trial option is very helpful”
“I like how simple site is now”
“Easy to navigate”
Stage - Deliver:
Hi-fi Prototype/Usability Tests
Keeping in mind the results of the medium fidelity testing, we have created a high fidelity prototype incorporating all the necessary changes. For this demonstration, we have created two scenarios; one with Dr. Gray, and two with Carl the Kid.
Scenario 1
Dr. Gray wants to sign one of her children up for a mid-tier, paid membership.
Scenario 2
Carl wants to login to his account and personalize it. He wants to pick one course and print the object he makes.
The high-fidelity prototype received many positive feedback, however, there was some shortcomings to address.
Areas for improvement:
Users asked about “maker points” in the My Account section. Which confused them that there was no explanation of how it works and if they can get anything after they've collected all the points ( Maker Points - are points that students can earn for completing courses, which can be put toward badges or more tangible rewards)
We made an offer to Zaf (founder of BAMC) to come up with incentive rewards.
Video page looks overwhelming. Our users tended to want to see less information crowding the screen. Additionally, users made the point that somewhere, it might be useful to have past projects that you’ve completed, in case there’s something from those lessons that you missed.
Next steps
There are certain features that fell outside of the scope of this sprint that we’d like to encourage BAMC to pursue in the future:
Comment Forum
Sites like Quora and Reddit use community engagement to great success. By having a supportive community where users can ask questions, and get and give answers, users will return to the site for the approval of their 3D printing peers through upvoting and a sense of pride in their community.
Weekly Challenges
A challenge for students to be featured on a leaderboard will create a sense of urgency to engage with BAMC. Here are some examples:
-Animal Experience: Come up with an idea for a simple design for a printable animal.
- The Name Plate Challenge: Design a nameplate in any way you can imagine! Here are some examples (include pics of nameplates)
Course Completion Badges
As students complete courses, they can earn points that go toward badges. Similar to merit badges or video game achievements, these publicly displayed badges will drive engagement with classes, and may even entice a user to upgrade to a more all-encompassing plan that has more videos available to them.