UX Case Study : Skilvul Challenge Mentor On Demand Platform
Introduction
Hello, My name is Riki Firmansyah, I am a web developer at a private company located in Serang, Banten. And I am a fresh graduate. I am currently participating in a training at the Digital Talent Scholarship Ministry of Communication and Information RI Professional Academy (PROA) UI/UX Design, which is partnered by Challenge Partner Skilvul.
| Disclaimer: This project is part of the UI/UX Training Program held by the Ministry of Communication and Information with Skilvul and Skilvul as Challenge Partners. I am not employed or bound by a professional contract by Skilvul.
Overview
Current learning media are not only obtained through formal education, but in the digital era like now, there are many online learning media platforms that help in learning activities, but learning using online platforms has several drawbacks such as the learning flow process and lack of interaction with mentors.
Mentors on Demand is a Skilvul feature that allows students to schedule sessions with mentors to help them learn. The challenge with this service stems from the online course structure, which typically has a high mentor-to-student ratio, limiting the mentor’s ability to connect with students one-on-one. As a result, students may feel that they are not being fully mentored. then this service is here to help solve this problem.
Objective
As a solution to the problems listed above, my team and I decided to share our idea to create a mentor-on-demand UI and UX platform at Skilvul. Users can develop their individual talents and abilities with the help of professional mentors who are experts in their field.
This mentoring platform will focus on:
- Increase students’ learning motivation. By designing a Mentoring On Demand UI that focuses on efficiency and effectiveness with smooth learning with the appropriate Mentor.
- Designing an On Demand Mentoring user interface On the Skilvul page. In order to help students find suitable mentors with on-demand mentor services at Skilvul.
- Identify user needs in terms of finding mentors that match their interests.
- Helping the learning process of students at Skilvul who need a private mentor to learn coding or UI/UX and other fields.
Roles
In this project I collaborated with Andini Pratiwi.
We carry out all our duties and responsibilities together, from the Design Thinking stage to the User Testing stage, including making pain points, How Might We, Affinity Diagrams, Priority Ideas, UI Design, and Prototypes.
But this time I’m responsible for handling user flow, wireframes and contributing to create a user interface. We are working on the whole process from August 2021 to October 2021. So it took us 3 months to complete this project.
Design Process
In this research, we chose to use an approach through the Design thinking process. We chose Design Thinking as our design process approach because Design Thinking emphasizes approaching from an end user perspective and applying practical and creative solutions approach in solving challenges. And the Design Thinking process can involve all parties in terms of business, users and technology in the process. which is an advantage of Design Thinking, where we solve problems by looking at them from a different point of view.
Stage 1 — Empathize
The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the problem it is trying to solve. It involves consulting experts to find out more about the area of concern through observing, engaging and empathizing with people to understand their experiences and motivations thereby gaining a clearer personal understanding of the issues involved.
At this stage, we take on the role of the user and conduct research on various mentor on demand websites. We know what users need in on-demand mentoring as a result of this insight.
But in reality, this empathy stage requires us to conduct user interviews to determine what feedback the user needs on the skill.
Stage 2 — Define
During the Define stage, we collect the information that we have created and collected during the Empathise stage. This is where we will analyze the observations and synthesize them to determine the core problems that have been identified. We should try to identify the problem as a problem statement in a human-centered manner.
At this stage we define the problem that we have created in the empathy stage, to find out what users need in the Mentoring on demand platform. Here are the pain points that we made.
- Pain Points, namely formulating problems from users obtained from the results of empathy and assumptions obtained from the user’s point of view.
After doing Pain Point we created How Might We to get the answers we wanted from problems already available in Pain Point. Here we choose to get answers that are in accordance with Solution Idea, where the platform design that we will create focuses on increasing efficiency and effectiveness in the learning process.
Stage 3 — Ideate
During the third stage of the Design Thinking process, we are ready to start generating ideas. We have grown to understand users and their needs in the Empathize stage, and we have analyzed and synthesized observations in the Define stage, and ended up with a human-centered problem statement. With a solid background, we as team members can start “thinking outside the box” to identify new solutions to the problem statement being made, and we can start looking for alternative ways of looking at the problem.
At this stage, we are looking for answers to suggested solutions for what elements or features we need to create in this on-demand mentoring platform.
- Solution Idea, at this stage based on the voting results of How-Might We which have been made at the Define stage.
- Affinity Diagram, grouping ideas in certain categories that have been discussed with the team.
- Prioritazation Idea, the results after all have been clustered, then proceed with the division of tasks to be carried out.
- As a user, I wanted a feature that could select a mentor based on my choice.
- As a user, I want detailed information about the mentor, address, and number of participants who have been mentored by the mentor.
- As a user, I want to communicate with mentors in learning as effectively as possible.
- As a user, I can manage my study time flexibly.
- Crazy 8’s, In the brainstorming phase. Is to generate several ideas in a short time. and after making crazy 8’s, each of them explained the purpose of the crazy 8’s that each made, then voted on which page they would choose to execute.
User Flow
User Flow is a diagram which is a step-by-step what the user has to do to complete a task. This User Flow helps us to know the good and right flow when the user completes one task to the next. Now at this stage, the following User Flow we have created.
Wireframe
Wireframe is a framework for organizing an item on a website or application page. The manufacture of wireframes is usually done before the manufacture of the product is carried out. Related items such as text, images, layouts, and so on.
In the previous step, we used Crazy 8’s Method to create a low fidelity wireframe based on the user flow we created. Then after that, we create a wireframe based on the needs of the platform design that we will create.
Then, we also build our design system as a style guide for reliable and consistent designs. We used the Eva Design System website as our guide for creating color palettes. We chose red as the brand color.
User Interface Design
User Interface is a visual display of a product that bridges the system with the user. UI appearance can be in the form of shapes, colors, and writing that are designed as attractive as possible. In simple terms, UI is how the appearance of a product is seen by the user.
The next step is to design the user interface on demand. The following is the interface design that we have created.
Stage 4 — Prototyping
Prototyping is one of the widely used software development methods. With this prototyping method, development and customers can interact with each other during the system creation process. The prototype represents the product model to be built, functionality, and system operation. Prototyping is useful as a tool for designing and improving user interfaces. In making the prototype, it is necessary to apply UCD (User Centered Design).
Prototype used to test the final product before it is released. You can test this prototype using the platform we created.
Here are the results of the prototype that our team has made.
Prototype link : Click here.
Stage 5 — Testing
User Testing
According to Crazyegg, “User testing is the process of testing various aspects of the experience to determine the best way for a website and its elements to interact with users.”
At this stage, we invite one of our users to test the mentor on demand platform that we have developed.
Our test takes place on October 24, 2021 on a Sunday, we do testing with users directly. In this interview, my partner is Andini Pratiwi.
We conducted in-depth interviews and usability testing to test the prototype we’ve designed and gain feedback from users for the future development of the website. The interview was conducted on October 25, 2021. Also, we didn’t do the interview online yet met the respondent in person in the same place because it is a possible and easier way for both researcher and respondents to interact. The respondents came from different jobs and learning interests be our respondents.
The Research objectives focused on:
1. To find out users’ needs in using the online learning platform
2. To find out the success rate of SEQ Skilvul Platform
The Research Scenarios during the usability testing as follow
1. Register and Login Task
In this task, the respondents are asked to register and login process. We, as researchers ask the respondent whether they might find any problems or does the registration and login information meet the user’s needs as well as their reasons.
2. Detail and Chat Mentor Task
In this task, the respondents are asked to go to the detail mentor and chat mentor page. We, as researchers ask the respondent whether they might find any problems or does the pages meet the users’ needs or not.
3. Transaction and Overview the Schedule Meeting Task
In this task, the respondents are asked to do transactions and overview the schedule meeting that they choose at first. We, as researchers ask the respondent whether they might find any problems in making transaction or does the pages meet the users’ needs or not.
After conducting the usability testing we found out some issues/problems that the users encounters during the tasks as follow:
1. One of the users couldn’t differentiate the button “Daftar” and “Daftar Sebagai Siswa” on Skilvul.com page.
2. One of the users expected the button “Mulai Sekarang” as a page that provides more detailed information about the Skilvul.com.
3. One of the users expected there is more buttons or features to know more detailed mentor’s scheduled information as well as additional feature like a message template on chat mentor page.
4. One of the users was confused about what “Tanggal kadaluarsa” does on the payment page.
5. One of the users expected there will be a notification on email or sms when they finished the payment.
6. One of the users was wondering about where mentor’s rating comes from and is there any possibility for the user to give the rating or not.
7. Both users need more payment methods such as through e-wallet, debit card, etc.
8. Both users also expected there will be a feature to set their meeting isn’t directly into zoom meeting link.
Then, respondents were also asked to give a score from all the tasks and experiences they’ve done on Skilvul.com by giving a Single Ease Question. On a scale of 1–10, the average respondent gave a score was 7,5 in which the platform was good although there were a lot of mistakes that could be improved or developed in the future. They also gave some feedback about the interface looking clean and simple not unlike another similar online learning platform.
Reflection
According to the results above, the prototype and the usability of Skilvul platform we’ve designed have a score of 7.5 which indicates it properly function enough as well as meet users’ needs. We are going to reflect on some issues/problems that users have encountered to develop a better user interface and experience design.
Overall, from this whole learning phase in Skilvul challenge, In my personal opinion, UI/UX Design is impressed me of how making users as a poin of view is essential. All the process are connected to each others. It opens my eyes wide about many knowledge and experience need to acknowledge in order to get a better understanding of UI/UX Design.
Recommendation
In my personal opinion, it is good for us as researchers and designers to always improve the skill and knowledge to improve and develop the platform we’ve designee in the future. Especially in user interface and the proper function on each button in the platform.
In addition, I’d happily to recommend for the readers as a beginner or try to switch career trying to engage yourself every day with UI/UX Design. The phase changes rapidly every day so make sure to stay updated on the field you’re going to learn. Practice makes perfect.
Shout out to all the people behind this online learning program. The Skilvul as a partner, our lovely mentor :), the respondents, also the teammate who is always accompany me during these learning journeys. I wish everyone the best and luck.
Best Regards,
Riki Firmansyah.