UX in Education
After deciding to learn UX design, I looked at my own current career and wondered where I could implement the mindset I am learning now to improve the user experience for my language students.
01
Identifying Problems and Research
Everybody has an 'experience' when using a service or product, whether it be physical or not. So I decided to see how I could improve the experience my students were getting when learning English.
To begin, I needed to put myself in the student's mindset. To do that, I need to reach out to them, talk to them, research and read what user's say, think and feel.
A quick search on Google on why students want to learn English in the first place, gave me this:
-
"It helps you to see things from a different perspective" (https://www.eurocentres.com/)
-
"It helps you to become a better listener" (https://www.eurocentres.com/)
-
"It even has health benefits, as studies have shown that people who speak two or more languages have more active minds later in life!" (https://www.eurocentres.com/)
-
"It could strengthen your employment opportunities both in your home country, and in the UK" (https://www.ihnewcastle.com/)
Carrying out this initial search helped me understand the reason why as UX designers we need to conduct user research before even attempting to make or amend a product or service. The comments some users have made above were certainly one's I didn't expect.
Users want to see things from a difference perspective. They want to become better listeners or in turn, better people. They want to live longer and healthier, more fulfilling life's. Then, of course, they want to strengthen their job opportunities.
User Interviews
After getting this initial ideas, I wanted to speak to some of my students to begin to understand what they wanted to get out of the experience of learning English.
I reached out and here are just some examples of my complied interview responses:
Giovanna
Pierre
Alexio
Ofelia
- "I'm studying at University, so studying
English is just something I need to be
able to graduate at the end of my course"
- "I love travelling and in this
society I need English to
communicate and make
new friends"
- "I just love everything to do
with English, I love the music, films, culture... everything!"
- "I think knowing a second language is important in modern society."
These interviews gave me an idea of what a user wanted or what a user was looking for from the experience. However at this point I hadn't really gotten down to the nitty gritty: pain points and problems.
In the next stage of the research and interviews, I began to look at what could be improved and what were users encountering during the learning process that was increasing stress or impeding on the experience being the best it can be.
This is when I moved on to the next stage of the interview process. I asked them the following question:
"Can you explain to me your process, from deciding to learn a language all the way through to course completion?"
I wanted to get a better understanding of what their thinking process was. I asked them to mention things that would put them off during the process or during the learning stage.
These were some quotes that stood out:
"I usually start looking online to find out what courses are available, maybe even speak to my friends"
Antonio
"What interests me is if the school or course offers online materials or an app I can download to keep track of my course"
Pierre
"If the teacher isn't enthusiastic I tend to get bored very easily. I also need what I'm learning to be useful, I hate just reading"
Fausto
"Courses are always at weird times. Also I'd like to have shorter lessons, more often. But it's hard to find"
Ambra
From these interviews and comments, I was able to get a better insight into the mind of a user when they embark on his educational journey. It also allowed me to break down the user journey into 4 parts, which would help me in the user flow and following steps of the UX improvement. These four parts, created from the earlier research and user interviews are:
-
Realisation of Problem/Pain Point
-
Investigation and Research
-
Education
-
Completion and Result
The realisation of the problem or pain point refers to the moment the student/user realises they are lacking a decent level of English. This could be for work, school, travel, social motives etc. However, they realise that this is important to achieve one of their goals.
They then move onto the investigation and research stage, where they begin to do some research of English courses. At the beginning, depending on the student, it can be casual, merely chatting with work colleagues or classmates or skimming the app store of an application. Or it can be intensive, where the student will proactively go out and visit in person schools or educational centres. Whether they are causal or intensive, doesn't stem from their need (both could have a big need to learn) but from their personality or energy to search, based on current life circumstances. All of this needs to be taken into consideration as part of the user journey.
Then, arrives the education stage. This is when the user settles on a course to follow or an application to download. This is where pain points can arrive from many avenues. Methods of teaching, course material, classmates, teacher personality, progress of learning etc, ease of course. This is is obviously where the focus of the UX development will be as many factors can rear their head.
Finally, the completion and result stage. This is the part where all the problems, stressors and pain points come to fruition and the lasting experience will be remembered. If the whole process was littered with stress and pain points, the experience in learning a language will have been an unpleasant one and one that the student won't likely take up again. They will view themselves as unable to learn a language or something they just aren't good at doing, neither of which are true. This is the end result we want to make sure we avoid as teachers and something I wanted to make sure I avoided. This is why I focused on improving the user experience of my students.
Next I moved onto look at the current user journey to identify to pain points more visually and apply the research I carried out so far.
Current User Journey
So as previously mentioned, I wanted to create a current user journey to incorporate the pain points I'd identified in the user interviews and research. So here is the current user journey:
Realisation of pain point
Investigation and Research
User realises need to learn English
User starts initial research, online or asking friends
User decides based on budget, offer and type of goal
User begins to realise the method isn't suitable or doesn't enjoy the course
User starts course.
User commits to course
User is too far into the course to back out. User feels disappointed
User completes course. Learnt something but experience was smooth
Education
Completion
Ideation and Service Experience Improvement
02
After collecting and compiling my research into an actionable user journey, I went about coming up with some solutions to resolve any user pain points.
The obvious one was "What could I do, as a teacher and education provider, help the user get their experience off to a positive start?"
Then I wrote down a list of potential improvements and put them to my users in conversation.
As we saw the beginning, users have a variety of reasons for learning English, even ones we don't expect! As an educational provider, to optimise the user experience, I needed to appeal to these and smooth over the introduction to education.
I asked my users, what they would feel more attracted towards, being able to choose a tailored made course, or providing me with what they wanted. The answer surprised me, they would prefer to choose from a list of tailor made courses. This was one actionable improvement to the user journey.
The next improvement could be the option of a trial period, with the opportunity to switch between packages during that trial period to find the course they find more useful. As humans, we tend to think we know what we want until we try it and realise that's not the case. Or we feel pressured by our peers to take a similar path. As a teacher, I wanted to avoid this. A student needs to feel at ease and doing something they want to do.
The next improvement that came up was option of materials to continue learning at home. This seems an obvious one, but something that could definitely improve the overall educational experience to my courses.
Finally, the option that got a lot of excitement from students/users, was an exit strategy. What is that? This would be a feature to the course, that would allow students to have a potential journey after the course, that as the teacher I could provide them. It would give them potential things they could do to continue learning English, next logical steps in their progression and where they heading it. As a provider, I needed to make sure there was a lasting user experience, not just for the present, but also for the future.
Tailored Course
Tailor made course that the user could switch during the trial period
Trial Period
Extra Materials
Extra materials so student can carry on home learning independently
Exit Strategy
An end of course exit strategy created with student to improve future opportunity
Trial period allows the user to get a real feel for the course and iron out pain points
Final Comments
This case study was a real help to me. It helped deepen my knowledge of UX design steps but it also gave me further insights into the mind of a user/student and how sometimes as designers we can be lead astray by our own biases or opinions.
For future work, I'll make sure to try an eliminate my own opinions from the beginning of a project and focus solely on finding out first what a user expects, wants and needs from a product or service. Then, before making any design decision, back it up with research.