Summary
R Upskill is an dedicated e-learning web platform developed for researchers. The platform has affordable courses & large collection of learning programs which equips researcher with the skills required to succeed at every step of research journey.
R upskill is a part of an ecosystem for researcher with products such as R Pubsure, R Discovery, R Voice, R Concept & R Funds. All these products are interconnected to help researcher in his journey.
The Challenge
Researcher has to go through various challenges in his research journey, starting from writing a manuscript till journal submission and publication. To overcome from these challenges, decides to learn through online courses, but the problem is to find trustworthy online platforms with rich & affordable programs, mentors’ advice and support, researcher community. Also, due to time limitations researchers requires short courses. For all this he has to subscribe to many platforms, as there is no single platform where he can find everything at one place.
Goals
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Design a user friendly one step web solution to provide researcher with an easy-to-use and understand, single e-learning platform
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Provide affordable and wide range of courses
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Provide training in bit-size video sessions
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Build templates, cheat sheets, case studies, assignments
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Increase the motivation of researcher to complete the courses
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Course completion certificate to authenticate his/her skillset
My Role
I was a user researcher and interaction designer for 4 months ongoing project. I conducted 8 in person interviews and
2 focus group interviews along with that, did competitive analysis, persona, customer journey mapping, sitemap, high-fidelity wireframes along with team member.
Target User
During our research for the R Pubsure product, we also identified three user groups for R Upskill. These groups were divided based on their knowledge, expertise, and publication history. The following are the user groups we defined.
User Profile
Beginner: A beginner pursuing a Ph.D. who is practicing writing a manuscript and seeking a mentor for guidance throughout their research journey.
Intermediate: A researcher with a solid understanding of the research process, having successfully published 2-5 papers, seeking to expand their skill set and grow in their field.
Expert: An experienced researcher who has published over 10 papers and seeks to stay current with the latest trends in their field.
Understanding The User
Qualitative Research
We have prepared a set of user interview questions and implemented them amongst different user groups. The goal was to evaluate the user‘s basic ‘pain-points’ and optimistic points. Below are the few important questions we asked.
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Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
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What kind of research manuscript you are interested to write?
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How many research papers you have written in past and successfully published?
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What was your biggest challenge when you were facing in your research journey?
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How do you overcome from these challenges?
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Would you be interested to learn online ?
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Are you using any platform for learning?
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How was your experience with other platforms?
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What is the biggest challenge when finding a course online?
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Can you tell me about what you are learning right now?.............
Below were the key issues we could identify from above research
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It is difficult for first time users to trust the platform to pay for a course.
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Often video lectures don’t meet the standard demonstrated in the demo.
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Majority Researchers find it pointless if they can’t measure their progress.
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Researchers feel that they mightn’t seem connected to other users / mentors.
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Lack of proper support, training, and mentorship
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No motivation to learn on online Platform
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Expensive and Time-consuming online courses
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Researchers are often laid back or ineffective in completing their courses.
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The majority of Researchers are not directed to what course to take next.
Quantitative Research
Here I have showed the data I received through online survey using google forms to understand the group of users’ needs and pain points in deep.
These were some major pain points we wanted to call out
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Analysis of the same top few platforms allowed us to understand their business model and accordingly plan further steps.
Key Insights derived from competitive analysis are as follow
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Very few courses related to researcher
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Expensive subscriptions
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No free courses without buying subscriptions
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No certification on researcher related courses....
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
User Persona
Below are the user personas of 2 user group that we are majorly targeting. It helped us to find the answer to one of the most important questions “ who are we designing for ?” by understanding the whole personality, behavior needs, expectations, concerns, and motivation of target user
Customer Journey Map – Learn a new skill online (Finding)
Customer journey mapping helped me to gain insight into researcher pain points and how to improve.
User Flow
Below flow shows how researcher is navigating through various modules and it helped us to understand what the portal is doing, in what order it is presenting the information to the researcher, and shows each features or pages it belongs.
Task Flow
Enroll Course
Make Payment
Get Certificates
Information Architecture
While conducting card sorting, users were able to find the topics, category he was looking for and after that we were able to construct first level IA.
Solution
Here I showed a mixture of how my wireframes formed into early prototypes with significant changes. I have designed only desktop version, as 98% of my target audience use desktop version for online learning.
Research has shown two forms of users. Half of them choose search and other half categories.
To satisfy both audiences, we created the below home page.
Home page with focused search on Hero Banner
Research shows that the number of users attempting to return from enrolling a course after they have purchased it. The user never comes back to the platform as they feels cheated. The best fit solution could therefore be to give few courses free of charge as a trail version while registering. Which gives users a clear understanding of what they’re getting into.
Wireframes & Prototypes
Conculsion
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The main focus here was to give researcher a one stop web solution with flow that is easy to understand and an attractive user interface
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Courses from Beginner to Advanced level in bit-sized
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The discussion forum like community (R Voice) was integrated with R upskill for users to keep them motivated to continue and discuss among themselves on another module
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Free courses provided before they enroll
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The homepage of the website is not a search-based or category-based website. It’s got the right balance of both
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Increased the user motivation by providing them certification after every course completion