The Proposal

This project explores how Achieve, a primarily higher-ed courseware platform, can help students be aware of tasks they need to complete and information that is meaningful to them to increase engagement and ultimately succeed in a course.

The Solution

The solution consisted of a high-fidelity prototype with new and customizable communication features within Achieve, such as the ability to create reminders and view notifications.

The Process

Here's what the 8 week process looked like:

1. Auditing Achieve, in terms of communication, along with conducting student interviews to make recommendations for improving the courseware platform.

2. Completing project documentation, such as a project sheet and research plan to conduct generative research and narrow the scope of the proposal.

3. Utilizing found themes and past similar initiatives to ideate and design new features, including a settings page and a notifications dropdown. 

4. Validating the prototype with usability testing as well as getting brief tech and accessibility validation and thinking of next steps.

Communications Audit

We spent the first week or so exploring the theme of communication within Achieve, Macmillan Learning’s digital courseware platform for primarily higher-ed students. Learn more about Achieve on Macmillan Learning's site. 

We experienced the courseware tool as instructors and students. The types of assignments and tools differed based on the discipline, for example, Writing Tools in Achieve for English, so it was important to also have access to classes from different disciplines. 

Below is an image of our understanding of relationships and interactions between Macmillan Learning, instructors, and students- notice the many question marks as we were trying to explore what was possible in Achieve.

Initial Student Interviews

We chatted with five current college students to not only better understand their experiences with courseware and communication, but also visualize their complex user ecosystem.

Our primary goal was to understand the value of communication for students in general to inform how to focus and enhance our communication solutions to better meet the needs of students.

Despite the availability bias and a nebulous research goal in mind, we found several key insights from these interviews, which validated some past research like student journey maps and competitive analyses we stumbled upon. 

Some notes from one of the sessions, which highlight what the student liked/didn't like about keeping track their work and some courseware tools they used:

Findings & Recommendations

After some empathy mapping, too-broad HMWs, and messy storyboarding, we came to a couple of findings:

Admittedly, some of these are a bit broad and unrealistic to take on, but this was meant to start a conversation with other designers and get thinking about more specific concepts. 

The Proposal

The proposal of how to improve an aspect of communication within Achieve was presented following the audit. I worked with a UX Design Manager and Product Manager to narrow the scope.

While chatting with senior researchers and directors, I found similar initiatives in two of Macmillan Learning's retired platforms, Launchpad and Sapling Learning (a tool I coincidentally used in an organic chemistry course). 

Below are some sketches from a co-creation session for notifications for Sapling and a screenshot of how instructors could send reminders with a custom message within Launchpad:

Research Planning

A survey where students explained their reasoning and with a co-design section provided an indirect way to collect attitudinal as well as some behavioral data.

The survey explored the current pain points, challenges, or frustrations experienced by users in managing their learning progress and staying on track, how they're aware of tasks that they need to complete, and what information is meaningful to them, and their preferences.

Research Synthesis

Once I did some more note taking, data visualization, and affinity mapping, I found that students want notifications to ultimately be:

Here's what was most surprising:

• There was not a significant want for text messages.

• No one complained about too many notifications- they just needed to be in the right place (and at the right time).

These things could have been clarified or asked more in depth:

• Making the differentiation between text and mobile notifications clearer. 

• Asking about the current usage and customization of LMS notifications, for those who use it.

After consolidating themes, reviewing good examples of notifications mentioned by students, and utilizing the co-design results of the survey I was more than ready to finally jump into ideating.

Initial Concepts

In the first concept, I imagined creating a companion app that reminded students of what they needed to do via an AI chatbot. It would also have addressed some of the recommendations we made in the audit, but the scope was a bit much for the time we had. The other main concepts were a sidebar and a dropdown, as seen in the co-design portion of the survey.

Synthesizing Concepts

I began with a brain dump of what notifications and a dropdown could entail. I also explored iconography. I denoted the concepts I was leaning towards in yellow. They included:

• a bell icon (surprise, surprise) with a badge

• icons for each type of notification for scannability

• settings accessible through the dropdown

• basic information hierarchy, such as the notification type and content and CTAs

I moved back and forth between sketching and putting ideas together on paper and in Whimsical. 

I thought about the tone and copy from what I learned from my research and best practices, but also considered brand guidelines some of Macmillan Learning's values. 

For the settings page, I went straight into visualizing it digitally. It helped to keep those previous designs from Sapling accessible as I moved forward with mine. 

I primarily experimented with how the notification frequency and alerts/reminders would be set. 

I also explored utilizing checkboxes vs toggles vs drop downs and settled on toggles for the delivery methods as those were more on/off actions, checkboxes initially for selecting notification types, and drop downs for specific notification frequency customization. 

Usability Testing

Upon the third iteration or so, I felt confident enough to test out the design. We tested with 10 students through user testing and gave them 2 tasks:

1. Using the prototype, show the steps you would take to customize your notification and reminder settings. Edit the settings so that notifications are sent to your email and LMS. Then, add reminders to notify you when an upcoming assignment, quiz, or exam is due as well as when a due date has been changed.

   • 100% reported task completion

   • users stated the overall the task was easy (10%)  or very easy (90%)

2. After setting up your reminders, you come back to the course homepage in a couple weeks to view recent notifications. Find where your notifications would be and view past notifications.  

   • 100% reported task completion

   • users stated the overall the task was easy (30%)  or very easy (70%)

Here's what users liked:

• the design was intuitive and easily customizable 

• highlights/differentiation for high priority items were helpful for scannability

• time estimations were particularly insightful and actually encouraged users to take action

• settings could be accessed in multiple areas of the flow

• "Once you know where it is, it's easy!"

There were also some valuable recommendations:

• making the dropdown scrollable (which it originally was)

• denoting past/read notifications clearly to minimize redundancy 

• a filter option to quickly view and sort through notification types

• the bell icon and its animation could be more apparent

• save changes can be automatic, so that users did not have to scroll back up in order to confirm their selections 

It was important to watch each user interact with the prototype; Some didn't actually complete the task (scroll back up to click "Save Changes"), despite them answering that they successfully completed the task.

Iterating the Notification Dropdown

Here's how the notification dropdown changed after feedback and testing:

• • added a button to view past notifications

  • did away with the unnecessary label for settings

  • differentiated each notification with subtle coloring based on importance/urgency

  • settled on a mix of buttons and links, depending on the action 

  • system updates were removed, as it made more sense that they appeared as toasts or where in the bottom left of the homepage where the current help icon is

After usability testing, I also considered a larger view of the notifications dropdown that could be expanded and minimized. However, this felt like too much of a disruption and almost a separate page, which I had to remind myself was the least preferred among students in the survey.

Iterating the Settings

Here's how the notification settings changed after feedback and testing:

• made in-line editing (of the email) more in line with standard practices

• adding a quick way to turn off all notifications for external delivery/reset settings

• more detailed, consistent, and clear copy

• automatic saving, rather than having to scroll back up to save settings

• using toggles for delivery methods and checkboxes for the types of notifications

• creating collapsable areas with customization directly underneath each notification type

The Prototype

After just 10 days of iterating, I found a stopping place.

Tech Validation

We got the chance to show our prototypes to several engineers and have a discussion of what creating it would realistically entail and require. Here's what we discussed:

• Big rock, not boulder- The design/ask would need to broken up into chunks, such as starting with a phase which allowed for customizing just email notifications. 

• 4 areas (central servicing, IAM, gradebook, and courseware) would need to work together, which might prove challenging, but the design was "not impossible". 

Accessibility Validation

My mentor designer mentioned Accessibility Office Hours early on. I attended a couple out of curiosity and eventually brought my own prototype for feedback. Here's what I learned:

• It's best to avoid temporary banners or toasts, especially if they're necessary to the student's experience.

• Be sure to have adequate labels for each icon, section, toggle, checkbox, and other assets.

• To consider how to better denote high priority items besides a yellow outline.

Future Design Considerations

• Rethink and iterate upon the designs to increase clarity and decrease cognitive load, especially as users first get into Achieve.

• Make it obvious that users are not changing their actual email address, just the one where they'll be receiving notifications.

• Sketch what reminders could look like as emails, texts, and to the LMS.

• Brainstorm an accessible visual confirmation that a reminder has been set (such as a microanimation or confirmation message).

Areas for Exploration

• Consider and conduct additional research with more diverse users and for specific use cases, such as neurodivergent students, specifically those with ADHD.

• Understand the instructors role and how they can control student notifications.

• Dig into what is actually possible in terms of LMS integration.

Takeaways & Final Thoughts

Get feedback early on and make time for iterating.

• I'm grateful that I brought my concepts to design critiques on a weekly basis, but I feel like I benefitted from the more thoughtful feedback from my one-on-one conversations. As the end was looming, I realized I needed more time for iteration- not that my designs were lacking something particular, but there was more to explore.

• I admittedly spent too long on research synthesis (below), even though I was ready to start sketching. I most definitely could have utilized some kind of AI tool to synthesize and analyze student comments and survey results. 

Get to know what others are up to. 

• This was by far my favorite part of the experience, despite my introversion. I set up countless intro chats with a variety of people- from project managers and directors on other teams to design contractors to the inspiring CEO.

• It was fascinating and valuable learning about each employee's diverse personal and professional backgrounds, as well as their current and past projects. Each conversation led to me to someone else. I found past similar projects, which was helpful for my own, and intriguing studies and initiatives, which lead me to my current role on the Learning Science & Research team.

Was this idea groundbreaking, innovative, or visually creative? Not particularly. Was it intriguing to explore student (and instructor) ecosystems and come up with potential new features? Definitely.

I ultimately (just barely) met my goals of wanting to at least test my prototype. I was also traveling around the UK and Italy during the project, so there was some brainstorming done in the air; It was definitely an eventful summer.

Nice. You made it to the end!

If you have any questions or would like to see anything more in depth, such as research data or any design work, please don't hesitate to reach out!