The Problem
Unanth.com were looking to revamp the User
Experience of the already
existing website. With the aim to drive the customer engagement on the portal, the brief was
to redesign the website
to make it more user friendly, consistent, and enhance the overall learning and teaching
experience of the users.
The primary target audience are the professionals looking to improve their skillset through
online courses.
The secondary target audiences are people who want to learn in vernacular languages, and
people who want good
quality content in competitive prices.
eLearning in india
eLearning in india is growing at a pace
which is almost twice of the rest of the world. With
only 4.1% penetration, It is supposed to grow much more in coming years. Since taking online
courses is a
long term engagement for the users, a good User Experience is a must have for any eLearning
venture.
By giving the users a rewarding expereince, we can contribute to the overall success of the
venture.
About Unanth
Unanth is an eLearning Marketplace which
connects Tutors and Students. Tutors can create
and publish free or paid courses and provide mentoship on hourly basis. Students get to take
courses
in several indian languages, Live mentorship from educators, placement assistance from unanth
and
certifications on various skills.
Open Course Creation
Open course creation means anyone can
come and create their own
course. The course created will then be reviewed by the Unanth team which they will publish
after some
corrections, suggestions, and improvements. This opens a up a number of possibilities for unanth
team and
the tutors all over the world. However, The course creation process is not easy, as there are
several functions
and steps which might confuse the user and finally defeat the purpose. Below is the flow chart
of the course
creation process that we designed to reduce the friction and provide a seamless experience to
the user.
Taking online courses can become a tiring task if User Experience is not taken into account while creating the portal. People learn in various ways, every user differs from other in the way they approach online learning. Some watch many videos at one go, Some fix their time everyday, Some take notes on paper, Some prefer online tools, several people like to have discussions with the peers and tutors of the course. There are many possibilities similar to the ones stated above. The aim should be to understand the most pressing problems of these all and provide solutions for them. Let’s explore some example user stories and the features we used to cater them.
1. “I forgot what lecture I took the last time I opened this
website”
Users generally forget where they left the course when they do not interact with the
website regularly. It’s not their
fault though, the system should be smart enough to track the activity and progress of the
user and let them continue
from where they left.
2. “I want to track what lectures i have completed learning -
manually”
Taking a lecture does not mean completing it. System cannot know if the person taking the
course is actually
understanding the lessons. There must be some form of self tracking functionality which users
can use to track
their progress. This can also be used to revisit some important topics.
3. “I need help with some of the topics, I wish i could reach out the tutor
or other peers in this course.
Lectures and assignments are important part of eLearning but an equally important part is
interactions and discussions that people have,
be it with the teachers or fellow students. eLearning takes this freedom away to some extent. It
is important to have a channel of
communication where people can discuss the issues and share their knowledge. Creating such a
channel also helps in building up
for the un-sturctured but important content for the course which can be used as a reference by
the people signing up in later
stages.
4. “I am learning development, I wish i could practice what i am learning
without getting to open number of windows and programs”
Learning to code requires hands on practice along with the lessons and theory. Development is
the number one skill that is being
pursued by the people in india. Unanth offers a large number of cources which are focused on
learning to code. It is explainable
that they required a way to let the users practice what they are learning on the site itself.
This will help the users focus on
learning and save the time they spend in downloading and configuring different programs to
practice the skills.