Smartly Academy Case Study

The Brief

My client, Smartly Academy, an online school that teaches business and money management needed a complete redesign of their existing platform in order to increase business and the student completion rate. The existing website was lacking an official on boarding and sign up process so I was tasked with creating that as well.

Challenge

The challenges my team and I faced was the initial confusion as to what was causing the lack of student completion. This took tremendous research and interviewing. What we concluded was that the students were feeling discouraged and an assortment of negative emotions due to the financial crisis many of them were facing.  When combined with the course material, which makes the student confront the reality of their financial situation, many of them would feel so hopeless which would cause them to no longer continue with the material. Our main challenge after this realization was finding solutions to keep the students engaged and uplifted throughout the course. 

Solution

Our solution focused primarily on language of empowerment, surveys after each module, efficient information architecture and forums to seek help.

We implemented language of empowerment throughout the home page, on boarding process, course description page, and throughout the course itself.

The surveys we implemented to pop up after each module is completed prompted the student to answer questions on their emotional state and how they are feeling with the material. If the students is in a poor emotional state or they are not comfortable with the material, then they will be directed to set up a "one on one" meeting with their instructor.

Another solutions was having a easy to use and intuitive user experience. This included having information easily provided and easy to find. This included reorganizing the primary and secondary navigation.

Lastly, we implemented a community dashboard or a forum where students can congregate and ask questions on the material and offer support to one another.

Result

The result was a complete redesign of Smartly Academy. The deliverables we provided included user flows, site maps, user research, wireframes for every page and a prototype which demonstrated two user flows.