Dashboard User-Centered Design
Converting design critics to design contributors
About Moodle
Perth, Western Australia – August 2018
The Moodle project is a free, open source, web-based learning platform for educators, administrators and learners. Moodle's worldwide numbers of more than 90 million users across both academic and enterprise-level usage makes it the world's most widely used learning platform.
The Moodle project is led and coordinated by Moodle HQ, a small Australian company supported financially by a network of over 80 Moodle Partner service companies worldwide.
The Moodle project is led and coordinated by Moodle HQ, a small Australian company supported financially by a network of over 80 Moodle Partner service companies worldwide.
Business Problem
Since its inception, the Moodle Dashboard and Moodle's overall development has been driven by its open source software model and the countless contributions by the community of developers from around the world.
But, due to the technical nature of open source software development, user experience (UX) and design thinking has failed to gain much traction and influence within the Moodle community. Design decisions have historically fallen to software engineers or "non-designers". As a result, usability has suffered and the Dashboard experience of Moodle has not kept pace with expectations from current and new users.
A new Moodle strategy for design and development is crucial for the Dashboard project and future projects to be successful and meet the needs of users.
But, due to the technical nature of open source software development, user experience (UX) and design thinking has failed to gain much traction and influence within the Moodle community. Design decisions have historically fallen to software engineers or "non-designers". As a result, usability has suffered and the Dashboard experience of Moodle has not kept pace with expectations from current and new users.
A new Moodle strategy for design and development is crucial for the Dashboard project and future projects to be successful and meet the needs of users.
"How might we empower all team members from within the Moodle organization and the greater Moodle open source community to become design contributors (as opposed to design critics)?"
Dashboard
A Portal For Students & Teachers
The Moodle Dashboard provides Students and Teachers with an overview of deadlines and assignments for courses they are currently enrolled in. The Dashboard is generally the first page the user sees when accessing Moodle, and Admins are able to customise the Dashboard to fit their organisation's unique needs and requirements.
User RESEARCH
User Data as a Prerequisite
Prior to the commencement of the design phase, I recruited participants from the global Moodle community to complete surveys and participate in video conferencing interviews to identify the major underlying problem areas with the existing Dashboard experience.
Our research findings were synthesized in a project brief to be shared with the team prior to the design sprint kick-off. An anonymized summary of user interviews and survey results was also posted on the Moodle community forums.
Our research findings were synthesized in a project brief to be shared with the team prior to the design sprint kick-off. An anonymized summary of user interviews and survey results was also posted on the Moodle community forums.
3 DAY DESIGN SPRINT
Answering Critical Business Questions through Design, Prototyping, and Testing
I teamed up with another designer to facilitate the Dashboard design sprint. We modified Google's 3 day design sprint to overcome time constraints from key stakeholders, such as the CEO, and team members joining remotely from overseas.
We used mobile video conferencing software and collaboration tools such as Realtime Board to assist in keeping remote team members as engaged as possible during design sprint sessions.
We used mobile video conferencing software and collaboration tools such as Realtime Board to assist in keeping remote team members as engaged as possible during design sprint sessions.
3 Day Design Sprint
Sprint Day 1 (3 hrs)
- 1Intros and IcebreakersBrief overview of the design sprint process and what team members can expect over the next 3 days.
- 2Understand: Lightning TalksLightning talks covering; an overview of the existing Dashboard experience, review of prior user research data and an audit of Dashboard experiences from competing Moodle products.
- 3Project Vision / Business GoalsIndividually, we asked team members and stakeholders a series of questions to help explore and articulate the problem space, eg, Where do you want the Dashboard to be next year? What are the primary challenges you need to overcome? What keeps you up at night? Where is the business opportunity to increase user engagement?
- 4User Journeys / Affinity Mapping / Dot VotingWe asked team members to individually identify and highlight tasks and pain-points in the current Dashboard user experience and to come up with ideas on how to solve them. As a team, we grouped these ideas into simple categories on a whiteboard and individually voted on them using dot stickers.
- 5Solution Sketching / Dot VotingTeam members were asked to sketch their idea in multiple states and then present their sketches to the group. Individually the group voted on these sketches using dot stickers.
3 Day Design Sprint
Sprint Day 2 (3-8 hrs)
- 1Recap of Day 1Brief overview of the previous day and what team members should expect on day two.
- 2Sketching / StoryboardFurther sketching of key states in the Dashboard were created to come to a shared understanding amongst team members of what we're prototyping.
- 3PrototypeRapid wireframes were produced and high fidelity designs were converted into interactive "clickable" prototypes using tools such as Sketch and Invision.
3 Day Design Sprint
Sprint Day 3 (8 hrs)
- 1Recruit Moodle UsersUniversity staff and faculty from Murdoch University volunteered to be part of the usability testing. Consent forms and non-disclosure paperwork was signed and approved ahead of the scheduled sessions. The sessions were conducted on site at Murdoch University.
- 2Test Plan / RecordingSimple test plans with user tasks were drafted, and screen and audio recording software was utilised to record sessions with participants.
- 3Usability TestingDuring usability sessions, participants were tasked to perform Dashboard actions and to provide verbal feedback of their experience. Sessions lasted approximately 20-30 minutes and participants were not compensated for their time.
Conclusion
Designer's Toolkit: User Research, Design Sprints, Usability Testing, etc.
Design thinking is new at Moodle. The few methods and processes the stakeholders and team members have accepted and adopted have been real game changers for Moodle HQ.
Design sprints in particular have left a lasting impression on the CEO and founder of Moodle, who said, "I'd be happy if we decreed that any new feature or product had to go through it."
In a short amount of time, team leads had begun to adopt design methods and thinking for new projects. Whereas in the past, UX was an afterthought, UX is now considered a key and valued contributor.
Strategies are also being developed to bring design thinking and methods to the global open source Moodle development community. The longterm goal for Moodle is to become a leader in "Open Source Design" and to be considered alongside such influential design driven and open source companies as Automattic (Founders of Wordpress).
Design sprints in particular have left a lasting impression on the CEO and founder of Moodle, who said, "I'd be happy if we decreed that any new feature or product had to go through it."
In a short amount of time, team leads had begun to adopt design methods and thinking for new projects. Whereas in the past, UX was an afterthought, UX is now considered a key and valued contributor.
Strategies are also being developed to bring design thinking and methods to the global open source Moodle development community. The longterm goal for Moodle is to become a leader in "Open Source Design" and to be considered alongside such influential design driven and open source companies as Automattic (Founders of Wordpress).