Learn My Way
2016
Product management Team leadership UX/UI Front-end dev User research
Whilst working as UX Lead at Good Things Foundation, I was seconded for 18 months as Product Manager for Learn My Way (a free digital skills e-learning platform) and given responsibility for the platform's redesign.
Platform is live, but has been re-designed since I was involved
Managing a cross-disciplinary product and development team, the role included implementing Agile methodologies for the first time in the organisation, as well as leading the strategic roadmap for the platform. The challenge here was delivering a solution that met the needs of the platform's end-users (people with little or no prior knowledge or experience of the internet), tutors (using the platform for teaching purposes) as well as those of the organisation (contractual requirements as part of Future Digital Inclusion - the largest digital inclusion programme in the UK, in partnership with the Department for Education).
The process
The Agile, user-centred approach I led focused on users with low digital skills. Collecting and analysing qualitative and quantitative data, and feeding this into the fundamental design decisions, was central.
The design of the platform was iterated from low-fidelity wireframes, through to clickable prototypes and eventually code. A user testing session was arranged in every two week sprint, mostly performed with actual platform users in community centres from the Online Centres Network, including users with accessibility needs - along with in-depth conversations with tutors. Removing all unnecessary complexity from the service whilst retaining the underpinning functionality was the principle challenge that emerged.
Planning and delivering Design Sprints and other co-design workshops was also an integral aspect of the process - these helped drive the design of the platform towards a sense of absolute simplicity and clarity.
I contributed to coding the AngularJS-based front-end in the final stages.
See the journey as captured on Twitter with the #lmw4 hashtag
The technical solution
Static site generator Jekyll was used to generate the basic structure for the site. Open source e-learning authoring tool Adapt was identified as it allowed the learning team to independently create courses - and custom plugins were used to extend Adapt's capabilities, notably creating one that allows interactive elements to be inserted into courses. Finally AngularJS was employed for core functionality - namely consuming core APIs to retrieve and update learner activity in the database.
The platform included a 'learner management' section, which allowed tutors to freely access all their learner data. This meant tutors could view and update learner accounts, track progress, and so on. This section has gone on to be extended with a series of micro-applications - including a one which allows delivery partners in an EU-funded project to easily capture learner progress through the portal and subsequently print this out on the official project PDFs (previously a painstaking manual task).
The outcome
Learn My Way was officially adopted by Google for training purposes in its Digital Garages as part of its 'First Steps Online' program.
I would like to say thank you, I completed your course and found it fantastic, and I learnt a lot. Many thanks for my certificate which I am very proud of...and I would recommend Learn My Way to everyone.