Spotlight

Spotlight is a learning platform that focuses on one-on-one engagement between teacher and student while in a virtual classroom setting. It promotes “active” learning and student engagement by creating a more hands-on approach through one-on-one video conferences.

PROJECT DETAILS

The stakeholder wanted to create an event booking platform for in-person skill-sharing, but once CoVid-19 hit, we quickly had to pivot our design direction to the virtual learning space. This was a challenge because we were unsure of what was actually happening with the country in that moment, but we were able to stand firm in our decision to create a virtual learning platform.

Hypothesis

We decided to create a site for teachers as our users to help close the digital divide and create a virtual classroom that would mimic an in-person learning experience, by creating a feature that would allow the teacher to highlight a student’s camera.

Research

The market of virtual learning platforms is a crowded market. In order to figure out what user to focus on for this platform, a competitor analysis needed to be done to see where there was a gap, if any, in the world of online learning platforms.

Competitor Analysis

Top competitors in the current market are EventBrite, MeetUp, UDemy, Coursera, as well as two indirect competitors, Facebook and AirBnB Experiences. The research concluded that the business model which was the most successful is the Matchmaking Business model which is used by EventBrite, AirBnb, and Meetup. The other business model that is very successful in the market is MOOC model (massive open online course).

Gap in the Market

There was one huge opportunity for our platform, and that was the opportunity to create a platform from the educator or skill sharers perspective. This changed the approach to our research because now the focus was on the educator as our user instead of the skill seeker or student.

Key insights from user surveys.

We were able to validate that users will most likely prefer to have the option of teaching their skill in-person, and would consider hosting virtual classes as a way to make their workshops accessible to more people.  When considering teaching online, teachers want to be able to “go-live” as this increases the personal nature of teaching, which can also be listed as a barrier with virtual learning.   

There was also an interesting contradiction of where people said they would prefer to teach in-person but learn online.  This is an important area we want to highlight because of its paradox and having both options available seems necessary to reach our target audience.

User interviews told us where friction points are in the virtual learning space.

Meet Francis.

After looking at the qualitative data gathered from the subject matter expert interviews, Francis, a persona was created. Francis is an active millennial who teaches yoga throughout the week. Since the start of the corona virus pandemic, the transition to teaching yoga digitally has been a huge learning curve. She misses the intimacy and connection with her students and feels like it’s challenging to give personalized feedback and verbal cues/adjustments throughout class.

Bringing ideas to life.

First Prototype Design

Our goal was to take all of the possibilities that we had come up with over the past few days, and bring all of our concepts together to build one single prototype. This is where we decided on the name, Spotlight.

Usability Tests

The same six users were then tested on the usability of our prototype. They were given three different tasks to complete. Task 1 (Direct Messaging a student) had the highest completion rate of 100%. Task 2 (Direct Messaging a fellow teacher) fell right there in the middle with a completion rate of 65%, however, it was clear that participants had a hard time initially finding their list of teachers. Task 3 (creating a new class) had the lowest completion rate (55%), as there were too many steps they had to take in order to find the button to “create a class”.

Key Insights from Usability Tests:

Ultimately, users were not able to find what they needed as quickly as they wanted to. Different users have different needs so they prioritize certain pages over others. There was a lot of ground we were trying to cover, and when testing it on users, we noticed they were confused and overwhelmed, there were some things they found useful and not others, depending on what it was they were teaching.

Another Round of Iteration

We heard our users loud and clear and empathized with their needs on for a virtual learning platform. Our subject matter experts expressed a wish to see a dashboard. They also expressed a concern around the confusion of the platform being for more academic classes or hobby/extra curricular-type classes.

Final Recommendations:

Offer one thing, and do it well. “Spotlight” focuses on one-on-one engagement between teacher and student while in class. This platform will enable participants to host video calls/conferences with small and large groups, while being able to offer the unique feature of connecting privately through a video call. This would scope the audience to those that are offering “active” learning styles, meaning the class is learning by doing, so teachers can really create a hands-on feel.  Spotlight will have a dashboard to allow users to create a new class, share their class (send an invite link to potential participants), as well as view a schedule of recurring “virtual classrooms”.