Coursera Forum Redesign

Creating a smoother Coursera learning experience as part of the Kleiner Perkins Design Fellow 2022 application.

Outcome: Finalist (accepted an offer at Amazon by the time I was moved to the final round process)

ROLE

Product Designer

TEAM

Personal Project

DURATION

1 week (Oct 2021)

Project Background

Problem: Coursera app's "Discussion Forum" undermines learners' engagement & learning flow.

"Discussion Forum" in Coursera is where course learners post topics regarding to the course content or assignment. However, the current design does not facilitate learner interaction and makes it hard for learners to find relevant posts.

Solution: Before After at a Glance

Here's an overview of the before & after.
Feel free to jump to the design process or high-fidelity prototype section!

Research

Reflecting on my experience feeling stuck at "Discussion Forum"

When I was taking a Coursera course this summer, the course required me to post an answer on the Discussion Forum before proceeding to see what others were discussing. The experience felt abrupt and I didn't feel particularly engaged with other classmates seeing the overwhelming posts on the Forum.

Looking at online reviews on the Coursera app to validate my assumption

Reviews on AppStore, Google Store, and online forums roughly fall under these 3 categories:

Chatting with people about how they are learning online

I conducted 6 20-minute interviews with college students and young professionals.

Research

Reflecting on my experience feeling stuck at "Discussion Forum"

Looking at online reviews on the Coursera app to validate my assumption

Reviews on AppStore, Google Store, and online forums roughly fall under these 3 categories:

Chatting with people about how they are learning online

I conducted 6 20-minute interviews with college students and young professionals.

Personas

Based on my interview and Coursera's official user story blog, I synthesized 2 types of people that are using Coursera.

01. The Learning-driven learner: Ken

Ken is a college sophomore who studies electrical engineering. He decided to take free courses online to supplement his school work. Sometimes he takes interesting classes just for the sake of learning. He thinks certificates are nice to put on LinkedIn but is mainly taking classes to learn.

02. The Certificate-driven learner: Susan

Susan is a mom and a middle school teacher who wants to take relevant courses to learn the skills and earn certificates for her career transition into design. She has a busy schedule but is willing to make time and pay for the certificates to prove her capability to future employer.

Learners like Ken are more looking for the "learning" aspect of online education... and the current app doesn't facilitate effective learning for them.

User Problems

Learners like Ken face a couple problems:

01. Stopping at"discussion" module

Discussion requires learners to participate before moving forward. It interrupts the learning flow and does not provide helpful content.

02. Looking for "Discussion Forum"

Discussion Forum takes extra steps to access and does not help learners find answers to their questions.

03. Finding support during the lecture

No way of finding help when problems arise during lecture video.

Problem Definition

Ken's Learner Journey

The learning-driven users' key actions and user problems at a high level:

The Design Opportunity

Learning-driven users like Ken value being edified by the courses, and they are looking for learning experiences that are enjoyable and can keep them accountable.

Design & Develop

Competitive Audit

Looking at how other apps are approaching"social":

Brainstorming & Converging

I moved forward with concepts that could solve immediate user problems for the short term.

User Flow

I reevaluated the user flow and information architecture:

Mid-Fidelity Explorations

01. Helping Ken better access the Forum page

02. Helping Ken quickly find what he's looking for

03. Encouraging Ken to engage and in discussions he's interested in

Final Design

Here are the key flows after the redesign. Now Ken can have a smoother learning experience and more organic interaction with his fellow classmates!

Jump back to before-after comparison

01. "Discussion" Learning Flow

• Now Ken can check out the discussions before posting his reply.

• The ease of commenting also makes him more willing to engage in the posts.

02. Forum Redesign

• Now Ken can easily find different kinds of information he is looking for in Forum.

• The more prominent classmate avatar and comment panel encourage him to interact with his peers.

03. Access Forum during learning

• With the Forum tab below the course video, Ken can quickly look for Q&A without leaving the video.

Next Steps...

Further exploring the "social" aspect of learning

The trend that is happening around the online education space is the rise of cohort-based course. With an abundant content but little engagement in most of the online learning platforms, the "community" aspect of learning would be what's brining value to learners.

Evaluating the success of this redesign

Moving forward, I want to A/B Test these changes to the mobile app and get both qualitative and quantitative feedback. This would allow us to validate the assumption of the learning pain points and determine how to approach the "social" aspect of Coursera, if it is worth pursing.

It would be great to have access to Coursera's business goals and internal data on how users are using Forum and business goals to set better metrics and define design that can meet both needs.

Learnings

01. Keep in mind the scope of the project and the user need you are solving

Because this was a self-guided redesign project, I've found it important to set time and scope constraint. Without giving myself these constraints, it's easy to diverge on and on, especially when there's no internal data to base assumptions out of. Revisiting the constraints and the core user need (once identified) you are solving for really helped guide me with a sense of direction.

02. No need to reinvent the wheel to improve it

When doing redesign projects, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking the end outcome being significantly different than the existing design. However, as I talked to people and uncovered the core user needs, I realized an improved version of the learning experience could be minor tweaks from the existing experience.

Coursera Forum Redesign

Project Background

Research

Research

Personas

User Problems

Problem Definition

Design & Develop

Mid-Fidelity Explorations

Final Design

Next Steps...

Learnings

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