Project Types
Mobile eLearning, UX, Content
Roles
Consulting Design Director
Consulting Product Strategist
Date Range
2015
Projects & Activities
Mobile Learning UX & Content
Assessment Workflows
Mobile UI Explorations
Jones & Bartlett is a world-leading provider of instructional, assessment, and learning-performance management solutions, across a broad range of fields.
Working as a consulting Design Director for Mad*Pow, I led a design studio effort to make an executive case for investment in mobile learning experiences. This included a thorough competitive review of players like Cengage, McGraw Hill, and Pearson. Before diving into solutions, I also conducted “inspiration” sessions to orient the broader JBL team to popular applications of touch-based interactivity in learning apps.
We used a medical terminology (med term) skills course as foundational context for inspired workshops in wireframing, component, and prototype design.
Outcomes
Our component designs and prototype were instrumental in obtaining a greenlight for further investment in mobile course development.
Inspiration as Education
Proving the value of mobile interactivity was at the heart of this effort. There was a strong interest in gamifying the experience, and self-assessment opportunities were deemed critical. With these factors in mind, I brought real-world examples of leading-edge applications to the studio.
Duolingo and Elevate were obvious choices at the time, along with Lumosity and Busuu. These annotated slides were easily socialized, helpful references for people new to the mobile learning space. Click to enlarge.
Workflows
After aligning on interactive component concepts, we began sketching workflow sequences for the med term prototype. These were captured as annotated wireframes with component descriptions and accompanying specification.
Prototype
Moving from annotated wires to screen design went quickly. Screen selections from the prototype illustrate the use of novel interactions as well as the use of audio, which is shown to be an important aspect of learning medical terminology.
Pluralsight is a leading online learning platform focused on technology categories like Software Development, Machine Learning, Design, and much more.
I was a consulting Product Strategist for Intrepid Pursuits (since acquired by Accenture) when I was tapped to lead an exploration into bringing skills assessments into a native mobile app environment.
Pluralsight had a very mature eLearning product with established workflows and a large customer audience. My objective was to stay true to the end-to-end system design while illustrating how we might optimize workflow and component design for a mobile-first experience.
Outcomes
By applying a user-centric, narrative approach to exploring mobile assessment workflows and components, I provided vital references and tools that enabled cross-functional alignment, as well as efficient product roadmapping, design, and implementation workstreams..
Experience Journeys
I began with visual narratives, describing different user types, interactions and workflows. These always help to drive cross-functional dialog, understanding, and consensus around the experiences we want to design and build. For Pluralsight, this meant a comprehensive review of existing systems with a fresh eye toward mobile experience design.
New Ways to Learn
After refining new user types and critical workflows, it was time to explore different interactive models that would make mobile learning intuitive and delightful.
Repetitive actions like committing selections and responses were worth examining closely.
Make it Mobile
Only a few short years ago, mobile product development was an emerging capability for the big education companies. Now of course its a must-have aspect of service design.
Around the same time I was digging into mobile transformation in eLearning, I was also leading design for some large-scale higher education web properties. In both cases, mobile-first design was a top priority.