Phase 1: Discover

I first sought to understand what kind of service Edventures planned to provide to its users and how artificial intelligence would tie in to the overall experience. The Product Owner and I had several meetings when I first came on to the project. Here is what was learned: 

• Edventures is an entrepreneurship learning platform that plans to incorporate AI as “Anna”, a real-time chat service
• Users will learn specific information based on their interest through gamification and conversation with Anna
• Edventures’ target users are underprivileged individuals who may not have entrepreneurial information readily available

I then decided to explore their current site and social media as if I were a potential user. With Anna and the gamification learning tool not currently programmed, there was no way for a user to test the waters with the service. I identified several UX issues when working through the site flow: UI inconsistency, lack of transparency, and dev errors when coding the site menu. 

Below is the initial website homepage before redesign. Further into the case study I will identify what was changed and why.

Phase 2: Define

Information architecture

The first thing I worked on in this phase was defining both the current and updated information architecture (IA). The IA went on to include pages I planned to design in order to provide more information to users and a more complete site. 

Below you can see what the current IA was at the time of the project. As a UX designer, I pay close attention to the amount of clicks or taps it takes users to navigate a digital product.  The original site lacked up-front information that can be critical for potential users to see in order to understand and connect with a startup, especially one that is focused on artificial intelligence learning as that may already be a concept that is hard to connect with.  

After viewing the site as a potential user, I felt it was best to bring more information forward and to expand the homepage to include information about “Anna” as well as establishing consistent UI elements. Below you can find the updated information architecture.

Defining brand image and consistency

Edventures’ branding was in need of some TLC as their sources for illustrations varied and the team avatars line stroke density and colors did not match the site or its intended image. Here you can see examples of what two pages looked like with differing illustrations and team avatars. 

I found an Illustration set called ‘Humaaans’ through the Blush plugin on Figma that I thought fit perfectly for a tech focused e-learning startup. In addition, I also designed new team avatars that better fit in with the site appearance and hold a stronger association to a tech focused company (prominent avatar design style in edu-tech learning platforms). Below are the avatar designs I created in Figma of the Edventures team.

Phase 3: Design

I first sought out to redesign key Desktop pages: homepage, about, and mission. My goal for the homepage was to allow users to have more information available as soon as they load the site. With additional content and UI consistency, users will be able to get a better grasp of what Edventures has to offer. 

Wireframes found below: Updated homepage, about page, mission page

The homepage redesign was a big change from what the page originally looked like. I kept the same information at the top section of the page, but added key additional information at the ‘newspaper fold’ with a chevron to encourage scrolling. With the amount of new information present on the desktop pages, I decided to incorporate a side swipe feature on some of the mobile pages so users won’t have to excessively scroll.  

Mobile side scroll feature

I designed an onboarding for the prototype that lead to flow paths that take users to the AI Anna chat as well as the learning tool. When applied to the actual site, access to Anna may exist as a floating action button for quick chat access. 

Conclusion

My goal when joining the Edventures’ team was to act as the user advocate for a startup that did not truly understand the UX Designer role. There were communication and relationship challenges along the way that eventually were resolved as team members came to an understanding of each other’s importance in not only creating the product, but balancing all needs (business, user, and technical needs). I addressed these issues by bringing them to the attention of the Product Owner, as well as calling for meetings to discuss obstacles. Since our team was very small, I encouraged team members from Development and Marketing to give their thoughts on wireframe UI and explained to them reasonings for specific design choices.