Blackboard

Learning management systems (LMS) have been around since the 90s. But even before then, organised learning was handled by machines that don’t even make efficiency sense to us anymore - which we will deep dive into it later on. LMS applications are commonly used in education systems and one such example is Blackboard. The Blackboard system is widely adopted by universities around the world to solve critical challenges in education.

Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) has adopted the Blackboard system that is designed to produce, organise and deliver school materials in an efficient way for their students and staffs. However, as a school and students’ needs are complex and specific. And they are continuously evolving, there is a need for the design of the system to keep up with the evolving needs. This case study is developed to explore the shifting needs, redesign and optimise the mobile view of Blackboard to further enhance the user experience for students on-the-go.

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THE CHALLENGE

Building a better digital learning experience for the educational community

The goal for this project is to better enhance the experience on blackboard for students to find what they need and easily access the most commonly used features in the platform. The original premise of the platform was complicated: visit the university website, university login, blackboard login, stumble around to find the information they need. The intention of the redesign is not to revert to the complicated past, but rather to create a good experience for students using the platform by reducing redundant steps and cluttered information - learning is a stressful experience and the platform should help in facilitating students’ learning journey (and not add on to it).

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THE KICKOFF

Understanding the impressions on the current design

At the outset of the project I didn’t have a clear mission or specific goals for the current experience and there isn’t any pre-existing insights, I decided to conduct one-to-one interviews and usability testing for the current mobile view of the platform.

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INSIGHTS

I tested the existing mobile view of Blackboard with 10 participants who are a current student at Victoria University of Wellington. The goals were to to gain foundational knowledge on the problems the users are currently facing.

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THE DISCOVERY

I was surprised by the number of issues discovered during the usability testing and the feedbacks given by students on how unusable the mobile version of Blackboard is. As Blackboard is integral to their student journey, the expectation of the experience is for the find important information with minimal effort.

The one-to-one interview and usability testing helped in identifying a few common pain points and needs of students through an affinity mapping.

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DEEPER INSIGHTS

Before proceeding to the ideation phase, it was important to define and synthesis the findings gathered from the affinity mapping (qualitative data) and conduct a survey to dive deeper into user themes and validate the qualitative findings.

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Affinity Mapping (Qualitative Data)

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Survey (Quantitative Data)

Collating both data set from the affinity mapping and survey and digging into the data revealed some big insights into the Blackboard experience. It is validated that most students have troubles accessing certain information that are essential and valuable for their learning journey and most of the time, the experience on Blackboard is a negative one with frustrations and annoyances due to the lack of clarity and pages that are poorly designed.

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REFRAMING THE PROBLEM

How can the redesign help students gather important information with minimal effort?

The mobile version of Blackboard aggravate the frustration and wasted time for students who wants to access key information that consist of grades, announcements, assignment, submissions and course outline. This led to the redirection of the focal point for this project from redesigning the entire platform to a concentration on enhancing the experience to help students gather key information with minimal effort.

This leads to the question on:

Who are we designing the experience for? And what’s their job to be done (JTBD)?

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The next challenge that most companies are facing is that that their own organisation is based around functional silos. With organisational hierarchy based around functions, the ability to make effective decisions and push through change is fundamentally opposite to how a customer wants to experience dealing with them. To bridge the gap, it is important to decipher the total customer experience (what the organisations wants to provide and what the customer would like to receive) across all touch-points — aka Customer Journey Mapping (CJM).

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THE BLACKBOARD REDESIGN

Introducing a brand new user interface and effortless experience for students to view and access important information to facilitate their learning journey

In a digital age where everything is demanding your time, the new Blackboard redesign gives your time back by facilitating the information gathering process, making it effortless and easy for students to find information that they need at their fingertips.

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FROM AMBIGUOUS TO OBVIOUS

Frequently accessed information at one's fingertips

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THE REDESIGN PROCESS

Perfecting the information gathering process for students

Through the CJM, I was able to identify opportunities/features, based on 2 factors:

• The impact it has on students’ experience
• The gap between desired and current performance of the app

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FEATURES PRIORITISATION

There were many features that I in mind that could be incorporated into the redesign, however in reality, not all the features are feasible and/or cost-effective for the business. Thus, feature prioritisation technique was applied to identify features that has the biggest impact and ease of implementation for the business. This informed the decision on which pages to redesign.

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ITERATIONS - A FLEXIBLE USER FLOW AND PROCESS

The next step was to conduct usability testing on the proposed ideas. To my surprise, not a single participant had troubles when asked to find information such as grades, course outline etc. The redesign resonated well with participants, confirming and proving that the problems and challenges highlighted in the research was indeed resolved with the redesign. Through the usability testing, there were minor feedbacks on the inclusion of on boarding guide, colour usage for the various courses and information hierarchy.

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On boarding flow diagram

A new feature to educate students on the key features that are available on the platform and allowing them to access these features easily.

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Course outline flow diagram

An optimised experience for students to view course-related information with just 1 click from the dashboard page.

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Grades flow diagram

Students will be able to view their grades pertaining to a course easily through the drop-down on the course page. Feedback, marking rubric and course submission documents are also easily accessible.

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Announcements flow diagram

Students can access the latest announcements from the dashboard page, and never miss out on it ever again! Should they want to view more announcements, they could click on the “See all” button and view all the announcements or filter based on the course.

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With the redesign, students will be able to have a holistic learning experience during their time in Victoria University of Wellington and enjoy a learning community for users where users can enjoy a seamless process of achieving their goals — from gathering information about their course, viewing their grades and feedbacks. With positive user experience, the school will also see an increase in brand awareness and acquisition as students are more inclined to using the platform.

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FUTURE ROADMAP

Further usability testing and iterations could be done for the proposed design, as the saying goes; be prepared for the inevitable changes and only validated knowledge is valuable knowledge for us (UX designers). The impact of the redesign could be tracked with surveys and user interviews to validate and explore other features that could be incorporated. Extensive research should also be done to facilitate staffs and lectures when using the platform as well.