SKILLBEE
Obtain amazing new skills with ease
BACKGROUND
With SkillBee, course creators have access to a comprehensive platform that enables them to design, store, distribute, and promote their courses, as well as manage all aspects of their digital course business, including sales, student communication and related product sales.
My role in SkillBee was to design a dashboard that provide all necessary information and actionable data on all aspects of managing digital schools.
OUR GOAL
Empower digital course creators to make informed strategic business decisions and assessments on their activities and courses through a user-centric, analytics-based dashboard.
THE CHALLENGE
A Dashboard for everyone
We had the challenge of designing a dashboard that would adapt to the ever-changing needs of small and mid-sized businesses, each with their own data requirements and technical expertise.
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A-Z Management system
Designing a dashboard that not only caters to the diverse needs of users but also serving as a powerful marketing and sales management tool for those used to managing their businesses via other tools.
RESEARCH
COMPETITIVE RESEARCH
To understand best practices in the field and identify and avoid competitors' mistakes, I am always looking for inspiration and researching how others have addressed similar issues.
During my analysis of the major players in the online learning industry, I gained insight into the visualization of data and the organization of course materials.
USER RESEARCH
Interviews and card sorting
Interviews were conducted with multiple individuals who create courses to understand their needs, level of data analysis, and any challenges they faced and how they were addressed. Participants were also asked to organize information through card-sorting to evaluate the information architecture.
Our goal was to identify their data management needs, priorities, challenges, and use cases.
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In-depth interviews:
After gaining an understanding of the pain points of our customers, the next step was to determine what features and information would be most valuable to owners and administrators. From a user experience perspective, we aimed to answer questions such as:
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What is the primary task a user should complete upon first accessing each type of dashboard?
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Which information or reports are most frequently sought by users?
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What specific data points could we provide to users to enhance their efficiency?
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How can we keep users engaged with reporting features and what customization will increase users' ownership and sustained use?
CONCLUSIONS - USER RESEARCH
The conclusions drawn from the user research indicated that:
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Many course creators did not understand the information available to them or how to use it
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They were unsure how to use the data for strategic decisions
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They wanted to be able to make comparisons among courses
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They usually solved the problem by looking superficially at the data or periodically requesting a professional to perform data analysis.
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Data optimization for course success
Users desire a high amount of information about course success, but without feeling overwhelmed.
Data-Driven Recommendations
Users needed support in interpreting data and learning how to use it effectively in a strategic manner to achieve the greatest results
Efficient student management​
Data solutions for student management questions/issues should be easily visible at a glance.
Flexible view of financial reports
Easily create reports and view financial information on a monthly basis (such as revenues).
Chart Interactivity
Drill-in capabilities were necessary for charts as most users attempted to interact with them.
Clear Terminology
Terminology needed to be clarified By providing clear definitions and explanations of key terms
PERSONAS
In general, freelancers and small business owners tend to hire analysts to interpret the data.
For medium-sized businesses, their primary users were in sales or marketing.
The Executive
Chief officer, Leader/Manager​​​
Goals
Uses analytics of ​Long-term information trends for monitoring performance and making strategic decisions​
The Analytical
Data Analyst/Operations Analyst​
Goals
Perform advanced analytics on Medium-term information, to gain insights and communicate those insights to help answer business questions.
Pains
Don't have the time or patience to navigate through complex data sets.
Navigating multiple reports, graphs, and data sets can be confusing and take time.
Pains
struggle to effectively communicate their findings and insights.
Ans Inability to generate custom reports automatically, leading to manual work.
The Operational
Marketing Manager Operational
Goals
seeks real-time, easy-to-understand information specific to their tasks, avoiding overwhelming analytics.
Pains
being overwhelmed by complex analytics and having trouble finding relevant information
IDEATION
Once I gained a better understanding of what the users required to manage and market their courses, I started drawing sketches to plan the experience.
THE OUTCOME
There are five main dashboards designed to meet users' needs:
Home, Sales, Courses, Students, and Student Reports.
THE HOME DASHBOARD
The home dashboard displays a summary of preselected information based on what users identified as the main priority areas. It gives a quick snapshot of the 4 key areas for easy review, especially on sales data. The charts allowed quick comparison of different data points.
HOME DASHBOARD BREAKDOWN
Flexible top 5 Components.
The user can choose to see the top 5 courses, sources of sales, products, etc.)
The main KIPs from the user research.
By clicking on one of them the user will go to the relevant report/dashboard
Flexible comparison component.
users can use it for a simple view over time or produce a complex view of comparison ( e.g. revenue vs. courses sales )
Drill down of account-related sales sources. Users can see the visual division of the most lucrative sources at a glance. Clicking on a sales source will show a sidebar table of income and expenses.
Sponsored media is a significant expense that our users want to track.
If there is no sponsored expense the user will be shown any other recorded expense.
SALES DASHBOARD
The sales dashboard shows revenue, net income, and conversions. It offers clear visualization and data-driven recommendations for actions.
COURSES DASHBOARD
The courses dashboard summarized course performance in terms of number sold, income, and course completion rate, the latter identified as a major selling point for course creators.
STUDENTS DASHBOARD
The Student's dashboard is designed to assist in managing payment and completion rates, and provides insights on traffic sources and conversion rates, particularly when using a free course to convert to paid. This data allows course creators to evaluate their return on investment for marketing channels and evaluate course performance.
STUDENT REPORT
The design of the students report dashboard is intended to encourage segmentation and engagement of students to boost conversion and course completion.
This dashboard also streamlines the communication process, making it easier than ever to connect with your students and build lasting relationships.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Overall, the final dashboard is a user-friendly and value-add for course creators. SkillBee now has a more defined selling point for its audience. It can clearly outline how course creators can benefit from an all-in-one course hosting, sales, and marketing platform.
Each of the dashboards has different levels of data complexity, the platform will always offer the user initial layout and filters, each persona, according to the level of depth and complexity it is interested in, can produce a more or less complex data image through the flexibility of components and filters it allows