Teaching and Learning Research In Action (TLR) creates resources to help teachers learn how to teach more effectively. I helped redesign their website, user flow, and content structure so that teachers found find the resources they need, and apply them to their classroom teaching.
My Role:
Leading user research to identify, define and prioritize problems.
Redesigning the user journey and product features.
Creating a component library and style guide.
Crafting a high fidelity prototype of the new system.
Results:
Improved retention rate of users and download rate of TLR resources.
Redesigned user journey, reducing friction in discovery and application of resources.
Rebranded style and feel of TLR brand, including brand colours and reusable component guidelines.
Tools:
Research: Usability Testing, User Interviews, Card Sorting, Competitor Analysis, Optimal Workshop, Google Analytics, Zoom.
UX Artifacts: Content Inventory, Component Library, Affinity Diagram, Problem Prioritization grids.
Prototyping: Figma.
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Summary/Context
Teaching and Learning Research in Action (TLR) aims to demystify academic research about learning by translating academic findings into applicable resources for teachers and students.
Their team of academics wanted help to make sure their resources were usable, so my team was brought in with the goal of overhauling the user experience of TLR's website.
We went through research, testing, wireframing, and iteration, producing UX artifacts and a high fidelity prototype.
Final home screen sample:
Our redesign of TLR's landing page focused on two primary goals:
1. Ensure that new users understood and trusted TLR's mission and
2. Guide new users to the types of resources that they are looking for.
Research
We conducted multiple rounds of research, breaking down exactly who our users are, their pain points and needs, and their thoughts and actions through the user jounrney.
1. Secondary Research and Competitor Analysis: Reviewing TLR's goals and offerings in relation to their competitors, and understanding their position in the problem space.
2. Usability Testing and User Interviews: Diving deeper into who our users are, how they use TLR's website, and asking what thoughts inform their behaviour.
3. Card Sorting and Tree Testing: Understanding users' mental models for website layout and organization of TLR's resources.
Journey Map/To-be Scenario
Using the information from our research we broke down the current user journey highlighting pain points and frustrations, and envisioned a what a better redesigned experience could look like.
We found that users had three main problems:
- Users did not understand TLR's mission, and didn't understand what the purpose of the site was.
- Users couldn't navigate to resources, even when they understood what they wanted to look for.
- Users didn't understand how to practically apply the resources for their teaching/learning needs.
Style Guide/Style Tile
We wanted to ensure a more cohesive brand identity, so we built a style guide to ensure consistent use of fonts and colours.
The client asked to use their existing banner graphic and brand colours, but to make it "Bold and Professional." Do you think we succeeded?
Component Library
To ensure that we had consistent visual identity, we created a component library based on Material Design. We didn't need to do anything too fancy here, so it makes sense to follow what people are familiar with.
