Inceptive Learning Platform
Helping busy parents access online resources and support
Task
To design a centralized platform where working parents can find and access all the virtual parenting resources provided by Inceptive
Overview
Inceptive is a start-up that provides expert-led online workshops and support for working parents, but access to these valuable resources was spread across four different platforms. To make it easier for parents to find the information they need, my teammates and I created a high-fidelity prototype of a centralized platform where parents can access the workshops they have registered for, get supportfrom experts and the Inceptive community, and discover new workshops about topics they care about. Although this was a team project, we each developed our own ideas for how to approach the design and took main responsibility for a different section of the platform. I was mainly responsible for designing the homepage (My Workshops).
Final Prototype
Centralized Platform Catered to Working Parents
My design for the My Workshops page provides a launching point for a new centralized learning platform and makes it easy for parents to find and watch all the workshops they’ve registered for – whether they are watching it for the first time or rewatching a past video. Videos are organized by upcoming live workshops and past recorded videos. The page also features recommended workshops to encourage discovery and exploration.
From the menu, users can access community support, discover new workshops, and view their account details.
Interactive Learning & Judgement-Free Space
While watching workshops in their browser, parents can:
- Instantly access important learning points
- Skip content that they are not interested in
- Revisit particular interests and questions
- Ask personal questions directly to experts
Foster Discovery
On the Discover page, working parents, who tend to plan for their babies months ahead, can browse workshops for any of the future stages of parenting on a variety of topics.
Feedback & Evaluation
Client
Inceptive is an online learning platform for working parents. The platform supports working parents by providing expert-led live streaming workshops, recorded workshops, and community support on a variety of parenting topics. Inceptive aims to help working parents promote their child’s development from early pregnancy through pre-school without forgetting their own personal and professional wellbeing.
The organization is a small start-up with limited resources. They do not have any UX designers on their team and were hoping we could provide ideas on how they could improve the user experience of their customers.
Problem
There was no single platform where parents could find and access live streaming workshops, recorded workshops, and support. Parents had to go back-and-forth among four different locations in order to access all this information.
Our objective was to create a centralized web-based platform where parents can find and access all the resources provided by Inceptive. Our target users were busy working parents who, as existing Inceptive customers, have already registered for and watched at least one online workshop. To be successful, our final design had to support the below user and business goals.
Design Process
The diagram below shows the design process we followed for this project. Items shown in dark blue were completed primarily as a team, while items in yellow were mostly completed individually although we actively collaborated to consolidate our individual ideas/designs.
Ideation Sketches
After working as team to understand and define the problem, we individually brainstormed and sketched out our own ideas for the organization and layout of the platform. As shown in my sketches below, my idea was to have a landing page with upcoming and recommended workshops. From the landing page, users could navigate to separate pages to access workshop/videos they signed up for, watch videos, browse more workshops/videos, and get community support via the forum.
Landing Page
My Sessions
Browse Workshops
Video Page
User Flow & Information Architecture
As a group, we consolidated our ideas and decided on the high-level user flow and information architecture for the platform.
Upon signing in, users would be taken to the My Video page which shows all the workshops/videos they have registered for, including both upcoming live and recorded workshops. Clicking on one of the video links would take users to a separate page where they can watch the video in their browser, add comments/questions related to the video, and view an interactive outline of the content. The My Video page would also show recommended workshops and links to pages where users can browse additional workshops, view their account settings, and visit the forum.
Prototype Iterations (My Workshops)
After converging on the information architecture and user flow, we fleshed out our design in more detail by developing Figma prototypes of increasing fidelity. Each team member was mainly responsible for designing a different section of the prototype. I was the primary designer for the landing page, or My Workshops page as we came to call it. I created several versions of the My Workshops page, constantly iterating based on feedback from design critiques and user testing.
First Iteration
Starting Soon: Upcoming live streaming workshops.
My Workshops: Recorded workshops that the user has registered for, including videos that user has already watched, not yet started, and started but not finished. The yellow/gray line below the image on each card was intended to indicate this watch status.
Recommended: Workshops that the user may be interested in watching based on other videos they have registered for and information they provided when creating their account about their interests and parental stage (e.g. pregnancy, infant, toddler, pre-schooler).
Feedback from Design Critique
- Language of “Join Now” button and “Starting Soon” section label is confusing and seems to oppose one another, making it unclear what happens if users click Join Now. For example, if a workshop hasn’t started yet but is “starting soon,” is it still possible to “join now”?
- It’s unclear what “My workshops” are. Where did these workshops come from? Are these all the workshops Inceptive has available? Have the workshops already passed or are they taking place in the future?
- Yellow/gray lines on cards might not be enough to clearly convey the watch status of the videos.
Second Iteration
Intervention Based on First Iteration Feedback
- Changed wording of section labels for clarity:
- Starting Soon → Live Workshops
- My Workshops → On-Demand Workshops
- Removed Join Now button.
- Added text labels in yellow to help convey watch status.
- Decreased the size of the card for upcoming live workshops so that more than one workshop can be shown at a time
Feedback from User Testing
- Yellow text is not legible.
- Confusion about what “Live” and “On-demand” workshops are
- Existing users seeing this new “My Workshops” page for the first time were initially confused about what it was for.
Final Iteration
Intervention Based on Second Iteration Feedback
- Added a page header “My Workshops” along with short description to clarify what this page is for
- Changed color of text to increase legibility:
- Yellow → Dark Blue
- Added icons to help convey watch status
- Changed wording of section labels for clarity:
- Live Workshops → Live Streaming
- On-Demand Workshops → Recorded Workshops
- Increased size of page margins to be consistent with the rest of the Inceptive website and increase legibility
