The e-learning destination for homeschoolers
For this project funded by SelfDesign Learning Foundation, a distance and home learning organisation in Canada, I worked in a team to create the MVP of an e-learning platform. I was the solo designer and UX expert on contract, providing guidance and designs to test the market's interest in live guided video classes.
Lo-fi & hi-fi wireframing • Prototyping • UX writing • Brand voice & content development
Problem
Parents of homeschooled kids want a reliable source for learning resources that are both engaging and educational. Their pain points are They have specific values that are very different from parents whose children attend brick-and-mortar institutions.
Goal
Create an MVP of a mobile and desktop responsive website on the Shopify platform that allows users to browse and purchase Activities led live by certified teachers, as well as access them through their user Dashboard.
Constraints
Limited market and user research.
Prior to my start with the project, user interviews and market research was conducted, but not systematically, and the marketing team generally operated in its own silo. We later came to discover errors in the business strategy because core tenets of it were based on assumptions, rather than research. The direct impact on wireframes was that often work had to be redesigned, scrapped, and redesigned again.
My solution: Whenever possible, I posed challenging questions in our design meetings that could incite thinking. Although doing this in the development process was rather late, it helped us actually correct some false fundamental assumptions, which were validated in user research from focus groups.
External developers.
I worked for the client, SelfDesign Learning Foundation, where we had our own project-manager led team composed of myself, a visual art director and a video producer. Sprints and development were completed by an external firm with experience building ecommerce solutions on Shopify. The nature of the arrangement limited my ability to talk to developers and ideate on best design practices with the development team.
My solution: I built a relationship with the project managers on the development side and took an active role in QA and testing. I brainstormed ways to improve our roadmapping, sprint planning, and advocated for organisational tools. My input helped shape my project manager's growth in digital product-specific project management strategy.
Small and inexperienced team.
Our project managers came from a background in education and thus had a limited set of experiences around product design in general. I myself was a junior in this process. Throughout it all, we had a lot of learning to do, but the lack of experience did not lead to a dearth of passion or commitment.
My solution: In the process of doing this project, I enrolled in several courses to further my skills, and acquired a mentor working at Microsoft, who helped me with my approach to problems.
UX Writing Guidelines
To align our communications across the platform design, I created a set of initial guidelines defining the broad strokes of brand voice, UX terms, and grammar/spelling conventions. Notably, I also created a decision history table to capture the reasons why certain terminology was adopted and later abandoned during the ideation phase. This helped my team members make sense of our evolving understanding of the homeschooler landscape.
Brand Voice
UX Terminology
UI Library
With any startup, lack of consistency is a natural problem that needs to be anticipated. Working with developers and an art director, I created a UI pattern library to ensure that our platform had a consistent visual look. The 10+ page Figma library contains colours, fonts, buttons, headers, footers, tabs, logo spacing, form fields, modals and decorative illustrations.
It began with the foundation of a UI library, but the future is atomic development into a larger design system. Goals for a future design system include: standardise page types, guidelines for modal types, and grid guidelines for all pages.
It began with the foundation of a UI library, but the future is atomic development into a larger design system. Goals for a future design system include: standardise page types, guidelines for modal types, and grid guidelines for all pages.
Colours
Product Page: Timeslot Selection Modal
Wireframes + Prototypes
Our ideation process was heavily reliant on live jams via Zoom calls because the client is a fully remote workplace. Using Google Docs, Figma Jam, Gloomaps, Notion, and much more, my process leaned heavily on prototyping. This was because creating paper wireframes and throwing post-its on them was impossible in the distance context. However, as an initial, private step, I often sketched out designs in my grid book. These were quickly translated into rapid, messy wireframes which we adjusted in design jams. Finally, they were turned into high-fidelity, detailed prototypes for handoff.
User Dashboard
Scoping and Business Case Analysis: Reflections
Bringing new products to market is expensive—and risky. Our 2022 MVP was not successful with our internal market and external targeted audiences also did not dive in. Reflecting on it now in 2023, I realise that I failed to recognise insufficient attention had been applied toward the strategy part of the double diamond process. Ultimately, our team experienced disappointment when our effort toward an execution did not yield tangible sales.
I remain connected to the project as it now enters phase 2, a time where higher leadership and new project managers (with keener business strategy approaches) return to the drawing board. We're now going through the business process anew, using freshly commissioned qualitative user research to narrow down the most attractive concepts. We explore and nudge new ideas, and seek ways to validate them before jumping forward. I'm currently contributing to the setup up of a customer advisory board and screening/scoping interviews. As I participate and study with mentors on how to identify an idea's viability, I've become much more aware of how to assess the end-to-end considerations of product design, and how to imagine potential risks.
I'm proud of my persistence and desire to see things through. As a freelance designer, the option to simply deliver the work and move on is available. But there is much to be gleaned from exploring the journey. I'm grateful to work with people who take bad news with magnanimity—no toxicity nor blame-spreading. Despite disappointments, the learning lessons are invaluable, and what defines a good designer from a great designer, is that ability to discern insights from what hasn't worked out, and to use these insights to be a collaborate better.
Testimonials
Kate Newstead, Project Manager, Nov 2022
I worked with Orchid on the HomeLearners Network project where we were developing an educational ecommerce platform from scratch. Orchid was an absolute pleasure to work with. Not only was she highly dedicated to the task at hand, she was easy to work with and a pleasure to have on the team. She is very quick to learn and I saw her evolve over the course of the project as a result of her commitment to constant improvement. She would always come to the table with well researched and well thought out ideas or proposals. Her quality of work and attention to detail is impeccable and I would highly recommend her as a great asset to any team.
Nikki Kenyon, Chief Learning Officer, Nov 2022
We ran the project using agile management and Orchid was responsible for supporting the development of the business rules and requirements for new functions, working with the art director to ensure the platform met the vision and was on brand, and determined the optimal flow for users as they interacted with the platform.
Orchid was instrumental in bringing this new online platform to market. We had a tight schedule and ran two week sprints for over a year. Orchid assisted in keeping us on track. Her designs and assets were on point and on time and always captured the vision, functionality and ease we needed.
When new functions and features were being considered, Orchid brought just what was needed at each stage of the process. She is creative and generative during ideation. She asks the right questions to help us refine and focus when we are ready to start mocking up designs. She has a detailed and keen eye when bringing forward final designs. And she is always looking for ways to improve the product!!