Case study

Brief

For this project we were given the task to create an accredited e-learning platform concept for YouTube that enables anyone to learn online and have their skills officially recognised in the UK.

Over 2.1 billion people visit the video sharing platform every month, with total views second only to Google. Primarily an ads based business model, for this brief we were given the opportunity to explore a different space for YouTube - the online accredited learning market.

We used the double diamond approach to structure our research, ideation and prototyping. The result, YouTube Academy - a responsive website for users seeking to change careers and learn from YouTube’s own pros.

Discovery & research

Getting started - our first assumptions

• “Users expect free and entertaining content from YouTube…”

• “Users have different motivations…leading to very different expectations for learning online”

From our first brainstorm together as a group, these two assumptions really framed what we wanted to discover about our users. If users have come to expect free content from YouTube - what motivates them to pay for it? If users' learning motivations differ wildly, whose expectations can we meet?

A great new product also had to overlap as a viable business model for YouTube and a desirable solution that solves a problem for our users.

First step, find out the users problems…

Research

We began our research by conducting interviews with 7 users who were both familiar with YouTube and had some experience of online learning. Interviews provided qualitative data around our users motivations, sentiments about YouTube and expectations of learning online.

User motivations

When considering the business goals of the client, it is the experiences of career changers and up-skillers who drew our focus, since they are not currently served by YouTube and are seeking solutions elsewhere.

User sentiment & expectations

User’s expect paid courses to come with a good industry reputation. Even if content was already out there for free, having a structured learning environment was critical. They wanted to learn at their own pace but needed a solution to keep track of their courses, engage with the instructors and have a valued certificate at the end.

Competitor analysis

So what could we learn from those providers our users already experienced? We used task analysis and a pluses & deltas approach to look at some of the biggest competitors. The task analysis of Skillshare, Coursera, Udemy, Masterclass and Linkedin Learning explored the steps for users to search and start a course, providing an overview of their onboarding journey. Then we started to identify some of the red and green flags our users had experienced. One of the standouts was Coursera. Some content was free, requiring only a Google account to access, while the paid certificate courses offered lots of flexibility and assurance that the course taught is highly reputable.

In interviews, user’s expectations of a course’s value to their potential employers increased with the formality of the provider. But they did express more positive sentiment around their engagement with YouTube, Masterclass and Skillshare. Maintaining engagement and motivation - particularly when learning solo - would have to be a key part of our solution.

Defining the problem

Persona

After a group discussion, we decided the focus of our solution had to target the needs and goals of the ‘career changer’ profile identified in our research. As the most motivated group not currently served by the educational material available on YouTube - we wanted to define them as our primary user persona to inform our design.

Meet Ben. Ben is looking to change careers but due to financial pressures is put off university or any extended Bootcamp.

Ben’s very online and an active YouTube user. He’s spoken to recruiters and looked for advice on courses that could actually help him start a new job but found it hard to find one that doesn’t break the bank. Reputation is critical. But so is having a learning environment that fits his need – learn at your own pace, lots of interaction and practical, hands on lessons from experts in their field.

User journey

So what were the common pain points our users were having with online learning currently that we could look to fix? A user journey helps illustrate this.

Here our user Ben begins the journey highly motivated. He wants to change his life. He’s heard of a few companies, and comes across one someone mentioned before. First step, he has to sign up to get a view of the courses, the website asks multiple rounds of questions – there’s a free trial option but again, more information needed, credit card details. He’s not feeling a lot of trust towards the site. Can he try it out before committing? Is this really the platform he wants to dedicate every weeknight for however many weeks? What expertise do they even have on UX?

Problem Statement

Putting all the research together we developed our problem statement. This would be the problem we were looking to design a solution to and would put our user in focus as we explored ideas as a group.

Prioritisation

By the end of week 1 we knew the solution had to solve a two part problem. Firstly, that first hurdle in the user journey - discovery of the course, understanding the value of the course to the user’s career and signing up. Secondly, maintaining engagement and motivation throughout the course. With the user research we had gathered so far, we decided to prioritise solving for part one. A quick gut check - we needed to jump back into more research to understand how users learn over an extended period of time.

Developing the solution & user testing

Time was tight so we felt a design studio process was perfect for forming initial lo-fi wireframes in an afternoon, which I facilitated with the team.

Our first round of sketches focused on these how might we statements.

How might we…

• Create a suitable course offer

• Build credibility

• Engage with Ben’s motivation to change careers

Our ideas started to form around 3 core elements.

1. YouTube Academy - Put YouTube’s incredible reputation as a digital media giant at the forefront of the course offer. Focus on what their expertise is – development, design and digital media production.

2. YouTube assets - Retain what users love about YouTube – the media player, video discovery, a logged in dashboard that recommends content and provides easy access to your last viewed lesson. Plus, try to keep that sense of enjoyment people have when using YouTube and channel it into learning.

3. Course previews – Give users access to the first module of each course. Avoid paywalling too soon and losing the users interest.

User flow

Our prototype would focus on this ideal user flow:

For the prototype, we followed a mobile first approach – restricting screen size would help us prioritise features in a limited time frame. User research showed users tend to spend more time online learning on desktop for more considered study time, but would find occasions needing to watch a video on the go. For this user flow, the key stages are the discovery and deliberation over choosing a course and not the course structure, with the user finishing on our dashboard.

Prototype and testing

We produced the mid-fidelity prototype over the weekend ready for usability testing first thing Monday. We followed a moderated usability test process with follow up interviews in order to gain quantitative and qualitative data. 3/6 users were able to follow the ideal user flow from homepage to course signing up and viewing the dashboard.

Users identified a number of hurdles they had in understanding the solution that led them off the ideal user flow.

• A subscription model threw them off of their understanding of the concept. Rather they saw value in a one off payment for the one course that would change their career.

  “I would expect to pay by course more especially because the courses feel very different, you’re only likely to do one course to change to one career.”

• They needed more information about the learning style and extra features were they to pay for it.

  “I’d like to see the resources or just more text - the video alone feels a bit short as a lesson”
  “Is it just a video?”

From this we set about making the user flow more intuitive and tried to build out a more convincing course offer.

Ideation

First change – a complete switch up on the primary call-to-action, from Subscribe to Find your course. We changed the subscription model and tried to guide users to find the perfect course first.

Next we wanted the course preview to provide more information to users about the learning environment they’ll have access to, including a new tab bar on mobile of key additional features to help them learn.

• Resources – particular for that course all accessible as you’re watching along to the lesson.

• Interactive quizzes would appear as the video plays to keep users engaged in quick knowledge checks.

• Transcript gives the option to read along or read later

• Q&A features allow users learning at their own pace to post questions to the course team. So, despite lessons being based around pre-recordings, the course still feels like a live, interactive process.

These extra features would be a starting point for future research and testing into the second part of our problem statement, as mentioned earlier.

Delivering the prototype

Finalising the visual design

As UI lead facilitator I had maintained a mood board of inspiration for the final design. We wanted to exploit the assets we already had, as we were putting YouTube’s professional team at the forefront of the offer. Some iconic elements, see below, had to be used throughout. We also wanted to take advantage of material design elements as a Google product.

At the same time, we wanted to reimagine YouTube Academy a little bit. Put users in mind of being in a professional learning environment. Looking back at the competitive analysis, there’s some common trends – formal, corporate - but not hugely engaging. We were not about to make YouTube pretend to be something it wasn’t, we wanted to meet the expectations of users wanting a serious educational resource and while keeping it…YouTube.

YouTube Academy - colours and typefaces

To give a sense of calm assurance, we introduced the blue (#464bb7) throughout as a highlight colour used across all call to action buttons, and a lighter blue for secondary background colour. We also used the red progress bar as a design element, firstly to remind users of YouTube, but also a playful element to indicate both literal and metaphorical progress.

Next two days I focused on building out the mobile prototype and then the team converted the design to a responsive desktop version.

Outcome

This was a tricky brief! From our initial research it became quite clear a major hurdle for an accredited YouTube educational platform was YouTube itself. We developed a solution that we believe could bridge the credibility gap by celebrating what YouTube does best while integrating a professional look and feel.

Next steps

So that was our first group project at GA. I think we all really valued having teammates to bounce ideas off of after two back-to-back solo projects. As we wrapped up we discussed what opportunities we would have liked to explore further, with a little more time.

• More user interviews or alternative methods to reach more users, like surveys.

• Diary study of users studying online. Research how they structure their self-learning, what approaches they like, what keeps them motivated.

• Testing the high fidelity prototype - with separate testing of desktop and mobile use.

• User research into a native app solution - test a hypothesis that signed up users mostly study from desktop but would want a native app as a supplementary tool.