Become the voice of the customer to constantly improve the learning platform in a user-centric way
USER RESEARCH
CHALLENGE
BACKGROUND
Life-long learning is the core requirement to ensure the own employability. But current digital learning solutions often cause rejections, as it takes too much time to grasp the knowledge, topics are too specific, or outdated, because the content creation takes too much time.
TIME
Oct 2019 – Mar 2020 (6 months)
AGENCY
LRN Lab by innogy consulting
CLIENT
Internal Business Development
CONCEPT
»LrnNOW« is a learning platform that identifies trend topics and automatically aggregates and curates free content from relevant online sources.
The content, mainly about business relevant trends, is condensed in short and multi-format learning nuggets. These should be easily integrated into any situation in daily life and appeal to every type of learner. In general, the learning experience should be entertaining and easy to consume in order to keep motivation high in the long term.
DESIGN PROCESS
I joined the team when the core idea of »LrnNOW« and the first working MVP prototype was already developed. My colleagues first wanted to test if people were willing to pay for the platform. The numbers were positive, but the reason why users showed their willingness to pay was unknown.
In my main responsibility as the voice of the customer, I first conducted a workshop within the team. In it we collected all open questions about the product and transferred them into hypothesis in the form of: »We beliefe that [this ability] will lead to [this result]. We will know that we have succeeded when we see [this (measurable) sign].« Then we developed ideas for different test designs to bring the user into action in order to observe his/her behavior.
Based on the workshop results, I created a final test design consisting of an interaction with the MVP, a short quantitative questionnaire and an extensive interview. Afterwards I acquired and scheduled the testers and conducted 12 testings of 2 hours each.
In a further workshop with the team, I presented the results, we interpreted them together and derived and prioritized next steps for action. These included, for example, adapting the story in the social media test campaigns, the decision to develop a new name for the platform, and conducting ideation sessions for certain features.
I have methodically instructed all these action steps in workshops, as well as collaborated on the content.
I also developed the concept of how user testing loops should always take place in the product development process and planned the setup of a »LrnNOW« tester community.
RESPONSIBILITIES
User Research | Concept, planing and execution of User Testings | Building Tester Community | Further Concept Development
SETTING
The project was an innogy Consulting internal business development assignment. The interdisciplinary, four-person project team was occasionally supported by developers and marketing specialists
LEARNINGS
The preparation of incredibly comprehensive test results, especially for team members who have not conducted any testings, requires a lot of time. Thereby the choice of the display medium has a strong influence on the subsequent working mode during the workshop. Apart from that I’m still not sure how much of the results should already be pre-sorted into clusters and selected before conducting a team session, or how much of the multi-perspective team view you then lose.
Furthermore, you can’t do both roles well in a workshop: workshop moderation and content development at the same time. Either I lose myself in the development of content and neglect the workshop framework with regard to the methodological approach, the structure, the time, the goal, the group dynamics, or I enable the team in the best possible way and can hardly contribute my ideas and knowledge.
