WEB APP FOR EFFICIENT CORPORATION LEARNING
CLIENT | COLLABORATOR
WHAT IS MOMEGA
MoMega
DURATION
A Learning Management System to facilitate newly promoted employees to learn interpersonal skills for their new leadership role.
2017.12 - 2018.8
COLLABORATION
Group of 6
ROLES | RESPONSIBILITIES
Design Lead
HOW DOES OUR PRODUCT HELP
This project illustrated three essential problems of this company’s previous learning experience including less efficient content, lack of interactive feedback, and irrelevance between learning and job content.
Project Overview
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM
For a professional services company, investing in employees' development is pivotal to its success. But how to facilitate learning while working is the first priority?
SOLUTION BRIEF
Create an Innovative Learning System Structure that focuses on three design features: Efficiency, Feedback, and Relevance.
1. Efficient Learning with Proper Level
Assessment-instruction loops allow learners view different levels of instructional contents depending on their master level of the topic. E.g. learners will see a shorter instruction if they answer a question correctly.
2. Immediate Feedback From Peers
Real-time and specific feedback from peers and facilitators to review a learner's learning outcome and learn from others. E.g. learners need to give feedback in return of their review.
3. Learn With Work, Learn From Work
Combine real work tasks with learning system in a light weight process. E.g. learners can learn delegation with reflect questions by delegating work tasks in the calendar.
Design Process
SET A DESIGN FRAMEWORK
We break down the 8 month project into Discover, Define, Develop, and Detail phase. For each of the phases, we conclude design decisions based on research, testing, and discussion with the client.
Discover Experience
To understand the context...
Who are the stakeholders?
What are their roles in the experience?
How do they interact with others?
A stakeholder value flow model helps us identify values that provided between different stakeholders in the entire experience.
And map out the big picture to define the design level of this project.
CHALLENGES
DESIGN DECISIONS
Complexity of the users' relationships in the organization
Due to the comprehensive relationship between all the stakeholders related to the corporation learning program, it's hard to aim the design focus of the project.
Map out users' relationships and narrow down the design scope
I defined the newly promoted employees, content creators, and training facilitators as initial focuses, who are the main stakeholders for the program.
A learner journey map helps us identified learning phases and key breakdowns in the experience.
By conducting a co-design workshop and lots of secondary researches, we defined the experience of a newly promoted employee trying to learn interpersonal skills for their new leadership role.
CHALLENGES
Breakdowns for users are scattered broadly in the journey
Due to the undefined and messy learning journey of the cooperation learning program, there are breakdowns scattered before, in and, after the program.
DESIGN DECISIONS
Segment and redefine the learning journey with breakdowns
I decided to segment the journey into different stages and map breakdowns to specific stage. So that we can categorize and focus on different breakdowns to create How Might We statements.
Define Scope
Anchor Design Focus
To target the user needs...
We keep a close eye on the journey map and breakdowns to create How Might We statements and distill the HMW that focus only on "What" and "How" to "Why" so that our team can prompt out design opportunities at a proper scope.
Fail fast and learn fast is the strategy
And map out the big picture to define the design level of this project.
Define Scope
ANCHOR DESIGN FOCUS
To target the user needs...
We keep a close eye on the journey map and breakdowns to create How Might We statements and distill the HMW that focus only on "What" and "How" to "Why" so that our team can prompt out design opportunities at a proper scope.
Synthesize and share the scoping with stakeholders
The design focus of this project was vague at the beginning. But project without direction is part of the challenge that comes with being a designer. Here we drew a Venn diagram based on sorting HMW statements and proposed a design focus shifting from in-person learning to technology based learning.
USE DESIGN TO RESEARCH
Fail fast and learn fast is the strategy
Since we have limited access to certain users, I led an internal co-design workshop to generate innovative ideas leading by the HMW statements that include stakeholders' thoughts to brainstorm concepts closely related to company’s culture.
In the Co-design workshop, I held 3 sessions including crazy 8, affinity diagram, and pro, con, opportunity marking to define the three main design categories: Conversation Learning, Assessing Performance, and Prompts Learning.
Go on a "speed dating" with users in design domain
Conduct design speed dating (Low-cost semi-structured interviews with a wide variety of concepts with storyboards) help us to probe the boundaries of introducing technology into the context of learning interpersonal skills.
Design Speed Dating - 30 mins virtual interview, 7 users, and 18 concepts based on design focuses
It's all about the "why" behind each willingness
By asking users which one out of three proactive level is acceptable and why, this method is not helping us probe the precise desire from users. Instead, we are probing unexpected themes and insights lying behind those grid cells.
High Proactive - Leaders send out a podcast to launch this year’s new senior training program.
Medium Proactive - CEOs send emails thanking seniors and announcing launch of the training program.
Low Proactive - As a celebration, seniors will vote for a keynote speaker.
Develop Details
STAY FOCUS ON USERS
Spot the desires and needs
Based on the insights from Speed dating, we identified the 3 main proto-personas to identify key values as well as the breakdowns in the learning journey.
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IDEA EXPLORATION
Build and test out interactions in rapid iterations
Paper prototypes help us test with users and answer usability questions and explore ideas related to the proto-personas in rapid iterations and low cost.
Efficiency
Test personalized learning to support efficient time-on-task and motivation such as self-assessment and metacognition.
Feedback
Test social learning to support collaboration and learning among employees such as learner forums, peer reviews, and virtual classrooms
Relevance
Test out learning methods that support metacognitive skills such as self-reflection and planning prompts that support employees
VALIDATE LEARNING
A little more than user experience
We take not only user experience but learning growth into consideration. Hence, we used some existing tools such as Qualtrics to create and test learning content with learners and validate learning solutions.
Prototype
DESIGN DECISIONS
Build out the information architechture
Based on paper prototype and content testing iterations, we create information architecture to identify key actions within the system and the screens to focus on. The Information Architecture contained by three parts that each of them reflects on one of the proto - persona.
Design Highlights
Our design solution provides efficient content, interactive feedback, and relevance between learning content and job tasks. Also, the hi-fi prototype provides a realistic experience to communicate technology deployment for the final code based working prototype.
Learning Management System Dashboard
Provided clear and essential information to finish learning in minimum steps.
Assessment - Instruction Loop
Assessed learners current knowledge and move ahead to different content based on the correctness of the answer
Real-time Feedback System
Allowed learners to complete their assigned peer reviews. After that, they can access their assignment feedback from others.
On-the-job Task Log
Combined work calendar and delegation into one time experience to reduce the burden of learning.
Code based prototype
Our code base prototype is mainly using the Vue.js framework and follow the Google material design guideline. Although it wasn't fully functional, it gave a descent presentation among design features and interactions.
Takeaway
In retrospect, what really went well in this project was our user-involved design process and learning theory based design solutions. We probed out learners’ breakdowns and then design user-centered solutions with learning theory. In the two-month product development phase, we worked in one-week design sprints to iteratively refine MoMega and obtain feedback through user testing.
The huge difficulty for this project was that we can only interview our real users twice in the entire 7 month design journey. Hence, we had to make the decision to find equivalent and convenient users during the project. If I have to redo any process in this project, I will start to find analogous users at an earlier stage. So that, we can get more feedback and understanding of their situation.
Last, I want to thank my teammates doing a fantastic job and cooperating with me for the design parts in this 8 month journey. Also, thank you for reading all the content (I hope you did haha). Feel free to ask me anything.