Design Thinking to Improve Digital Curriculum Library

Challenge  I work in product development and was tasked to develop a resource library for customers to organize  product manuals, activities, videos, and downloads which they could easily query based product,  keyword, and topic (at a minimum) and define a workflow/process for content updates and additions.  The project was supported by a small web-development team, tech writer, and two curriculum  developers in addition to a small budget for freelancers to fill in gaps and perform some data entry. The  project needed to use <20% of employee time over 60 days and launch Feb 1st to coincide a exhibition  and conference. I chose to study the specific task of adding new content using my team as  representative stakeholders to test some off the shelf tools and identify friction points within the  content loading process. Readers note: as an example, think of the video upload process on YouTube.

Selection  I decided on the learning launch since our implementation was somewhat constrained by modifications  we could make to existing tools, so a wide-open brainstorming (including visualization, storytelling, and  mind mapping) of the upload process wasn’t as applicable to this project. We couldn’t invent a  fundamentally new workflow in the resource limits so spending time on the perfect design wouldn’t be  helpful. Learning Launch provided a process to test differences where we clearly needed data to base  decisions on and make needed changes within the scope the project.

Application  Our hypothesis was that if we improved the materials list formatting step in the upload process more  content would be uploaded. Our assumption was that out of all the upload steps, this was the most  problematic and acted as a barrier to publishing otherwise finished content. We also assumed that our  template was being used, and that only reviewed content was being uploaded so changes wouldn’t be  made once published. For the learning launch we prioritized the assumption that this step was  problematic to test. This project is still a WIP but applying this method to other assumptions is part of  our plan.

To test this key assumption we decided to create a “magic button” that would effectively allow users to  skip particular steps in a simulation and be provided with the work product. This allowed us to remove  all the friction of a particular step to see how successful our customers were in completing the  process.  While we can’t implement this level of change, it was a very achievable test that should provide data on  the most problematic steps to focus our design improvements.

Insight  The results supported our hypothesis but also identified another problem area (of course!). The  materials process was a barrier for users but to our surprise so was the tagging of materials in other  categories. After talking with customers it became clear they had not internalized the list of options and  in effort to correctly categorize materials were reviewing all options in many uploads, taking valuable  time from content development.

In reviewing the results with our team and some of the other curriculum authors we developed a  technical solution and a process change – which was initially outside the scope of our work. By putting in  place an autofill program the materials list entry was significantly improved and by adding some  additional fields to the templates the authors could help identify categories at the time content was  developed, saving them from researching categories later when the content was loaded. This last step

was surprisingly impactful, by grouping the relevant work authors perceived significant efficiency (we  haven’t quantified it yet but there is improvement).

Approach  I would use this tool again in the future but would like to experiment with others. Testing assumptions  where our team lacked sufficient data was critical to prioritizing our work and identified problem areas  that were not in our initial assumptions. Having more input upstream in a project the mind mapping  tools could be very useful to find process groups, which we stumbled into in this case, that could lead to  better design solutions. I’ve brought some of these tools up with the program leader so that when  customers are interviewed we can create some of these artifacts. This would be useful to subsequent  project teams farther downstream and either help to understand why certain decisions were made or  provide data for constant improvements and process reviews.

