The digital education market has grown significantly over the past decade, with 2020’s global pandemic accelerating this trend.
My role was to establish Scholarin’s foundational business strategy, outlining its vision, mission, and objectives to support its growth. This involved comprehensive research on users and competitors, laying a groundwork for Scholarin’s success.
I developed Scholarin's initial branding strategy, establishing its unique value proposition, market positioning, and core assets such as logos, color schemes, and other key visuals.
Creating Scholarin’s MVP was a critical step, where I designed the essential features to meet user needs and align with the business strategy. My goal throughout was to equip Scholarin with the insights and tools to succeed in the dynamic digital education landscape.
The goal was to develop an MVP product and business strategy tailored for success in the competitive e-learning market within a tight timeline. Due to the limited timeframe and broad project scope, managing stakeholder expectations was crucial, highlighting the lesser importance of visual design at this stage. I led the development of the business model, conducted market research, created branding assets, designed UX architecture, built a clickable prototype, and performed user testing, all within a four-month schedule.
Competitor analysis was pivotal in shaping our business strategy and design choices for this project. Subsequently, after building the prototype, we conducted user research to identify usability issues and user pain points.
For this project, UX development entailed crafting research-based personas, defining key user stories, constructing a site map, and delineating a comprehensive feature set. We identified three main categories of users: Students, Instructors, and Free Users, each with distinct personas, and user stories. The overarching aim was to create a streamlined and intuitive platform that catered to the needs of each user category.
I aimed to maintain a minimalist visual design for both aesthetic appeal and due to time constraints. The design system primarily utilizes a combination of the primary red and grayscale colors. The logo features the letter "S" from Scholarin and depicts two books stacked on top of each other, symbolizing education.
*Please note that the following screens do not outline full features or flows, and only serve to get a better holistic view of the project. If you would like to see the full project, please request the UX architect guide.
ChatGPTCreating an MVP for Scholarin involved building three main sections: the marketing site, the student portal, and the instructor portal.
The marketing site captures users' attention and educates them on Scholarin's benefits and offerings, emphasizing the advantages of earning micro-degrees and AP credits. The student portal allows students to access course materials, submit assignments, communicate with peers and instructors, and track their progress. The instructor portal enables instructors to monitor student progress both individually and at the class level, providing full functionality for teaching online courses while offering metadata and safeguards for students at risk of failing.
While I was unable to fully develop the mobile-responsive screens, I emphasized to the client the critical importance of mobile responsiveness for their project. To illustrate this, I provided examples of how key screens might appear on mobile devices, emphasizing the need for seamless user experience across all devices.
This project encompassed an extensive scope, where I translated the stakeholders' concept into various components, spanning from business strategy to branding materials and a clickable MVP prototype. Due to the project's breadth and time constraints, I couldn't dedicate as much time to visual components as desired.
I particularly enjoyed outlining the business model, as it granted me significant control over product fit and strategy, a rare opportunity for UX designers.
Though I haven't followed up with the stakeholders post-handover, I've learned they changed the company/platform's name, which I was pleased to hear. I'm immensely grateful to the stakeholders for entrusting me with their concept and the design of this project.