OVERVIEW

Lynda.com Redesign

ROLE

UI/UX Designer

CLIENT

DESIGNATION Labs

TOOLS

Pen & Paper | Illustrator |
Sketch

BACKGROUND

Lynda.com is one of the leading online learning platforms aimed at helping people learn business, software, technology and creative skills to achieve personal and professional goals. In April 2015, LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com, with a shared goal to connect even more people across the world to education and professional development opportunities.

THE CHALLENGE

As part of an exploratory challenge with DESIGNATION, my team of three was tasked with redesigning Lynda's online learning experience to account for the new shared business goals. The aim of the redesign was to enhance the current platform and potentially integrate a new feature that targets users interested in advancing or changing their careers.

DELIVERABLES

THE APPROACH

We used the Agile methodology and the design thinking approach for this project.

RESEARCH

01

Understand

The overarching goal of our research was to understand Lynda’s current product, the online learning landscape and identify initial areas of opportunity for the redesign.

DOMAIN RESEARCH

Since Lynda.com is now owned by Linkedin, it was important to understand their individual goals and shared goals, to ensure that our redesign concept was aligned.

Shared Business Goals:

Empower people to change their lives through access to information, learning and professional development
Help professionals be better at what they do
Connect people across the world and foster opportunity

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS AND SWOT ANALYSIS

Through both a comprehensive competitive analysis and SWOT analysis, we were able to gain an understanding of where Lynda stood on features, format, content, and interface design in comparison to other online learning platforms.

Key Insights:

Affiliation with LinkedIn provides opportunity (exposure, capital, shared goals, cross-integration)
Lynda lacks interactive features compared to other competitors
The dated and confusing user interface may deter users, cause inefficiencies and lack of focus for users

USER INTERVIEWS & AFFINITY DIAGRAMMING

We collaborated with larger team of UX designers to interview a wide range of online learning users to get a better understanding of their motivations, goals, and needs, as well as their frustrations with current platforms. After speaking with our users, we created an affinity diagram to synthesize the results and uncover key patterns and similarities amongst the users.

Key Insights:

Having interactive features is important - Lynda currently feels like just a one way interaction
Many users are motivated by career advancement or career change
Flexibility and accessibility with online learning are very important

SYNTHESIS

Define

Now that we had a better understanding of the product, our users and the landscape, we now needed to bring clarity and focus to the problem we were trying to solve with our redesign.

DEVELOPING USER PERSONAS

The two UX leads on my team created two primary personas that captured the main goals, behaviors and pain points of our typical users.

DEFINING THE PROBLEM & OUTLINING DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Based on our research and user insights we worked together to define a problem for which we wanted to solve. We also developed design principles that were then used throughout the project to guide our design decisions and priorities.

Users need a way of building on the skills and knowledge learned through course videos to further their understanding of technologies and software, as well as to allow them opportunities to advance or change their careers.

Provide a clean and simple display for users to easily navigate and find the content they desire.

Give users the tools to focus and customize their learning based on their interests and aspirations.

Give users the opportunity to connect with other like-minded, knowledgeable people within their aspired careers

Give users a way to build on the course videos by providing unique opportunities to build on skills and further their career.

UX DESIGN

Ideate / Prototype / Test / Iterate

Due to the short timeline of this project, my team conducted several rounds of rapid ideation, prototyping, testing and iteration on our redesign concept before arriving at the final design.

SKETCHING AND CONCEPT TESTING

Each team member sketched out ideas for a potential interface redesign and new feature. We then each presented our sketches and collectively decided on two different redesign concepts to test for initial concept validation.

We turned our sketches into paper prototypes, ran through tasks wth some users, and took notes for future iterations.

DEVEOPING WIREFRAMES & ITERATING

My two team members continued to refine the redesign concept and create wireframes, while I shifted my focus to brand exploration for the visual design.

The first two redesign concepts were well received by users, however we realized that they would require a large outlay of capital and time to support. So we spent some time as a group re-discussing the problem statement, the user interview insights and the testing feedback, and collectively came up with what we believed to be a better aligned solution.

FINAL SOLUTION

We designed a solution that better addressed the main problem, pain points and motivations identified in our research. I worked closely with my team members on generating copy, designing the landing page, and refining the overall interface layout on the final wireframes.

VISUAL DESIGN

UI DESIGN

Developing the Style

Throughout the UX design process, I was also exploring potential rebranding ideas and working on the overall visual design.

BRAND EXPLORATION

I first conducted a visual analysis of the current brands owned by LinkedIn, to help ensure that the look of the redesign felt cohesive with the overall brand.

Key Insights

Prominent use of black and grey in all brands.
The fonts, color usage and logos project professionalism and credibility.
The color yellow is distinct to Lynda.com

STYlE EXPLORATION

After creating a moodboard, I then jumped into creating two different style tiles. I presented both to my team, and we agreed to move forward with the second style on our redesign.

STYLE GUIDE & UI KIT

I created the style guide and UI kit to serve as a visual guide for designing the high-fidelity mockups.

THE RESULT

Final Design

I focused on creating high-fidelity mockups for the key screens. Click each tab below and scroll to view each of the different dashboard screens.

1- Landing Page

2- Sign In

3 - Workshop Dashboard (Initial Empty State)

4 - Interests/Preferences Onboarding

5 - Workshop Dashboard (Recommended Workshops)

6 - Workshop Dashboard (Attending Workshops & Notification Modal)

7 - Workshop Video & Chat Screen

8 - Course Dashboard (In Progress Courses)

9 - Course Video Screen

10 - Modals & Notifications

NEXT STEPS

Given the timeline and constraints around the project, my team also considered what our next steps would be if we had additional time and resources:

Expand our reach and conduct a second round of user interviews that focus on a) people who use Lynda.com and at least one other online learning platform; and b) asking additional strategic questions to build on our insights
Iterate on our design based on any insights gained from the additional interviews
Create a clickable prototype from our high fidelity mockups
Conduct user tests using our prototype
Iterate, iterate, iterate!

Lynda.com