Overview
As a publisher, Cengage delivers most of it's courses as pre-authored and pre-packaged entities. While this helps the business achieve economies of scale, It doesn't meet Instructor requirements to customize the courses to their teaching style. Especially when it comes to Assessment questions
The Problem
User Problems
- Editing even minor typos/mistakes in questions required central review, and reauthoring and several hours spent explaining things to support personnel
- Inability to use own questions in the course
- Remove questions that are not relevant to the current syllabus/course being taught
Business Problems
- Huge support overhead in coordinating different versions of the course and edits, especially in the case of stylistic changes
- Despite being a highly wanted feature, the real need of the feature was an unkown risk
- Integrity of course quality could potentially be compromised if changes were made in bad faith
USER RESEARCH
User Interviews:
Generative User Interviews to identify user goals and pain points
Journey Map:
Building a comprehensive Journey Map touching several stakeholders with a focus on Instructors and Learners
Design Process
Brainstorming and Wireframing:
Ideating solutions and prototyping designs to communicate solutions while accommodating business and feasibility constraints
User Validation:
Iterative validation of designs for value testing to ensure that design meets user pains
High Fidelity Prototype:
Creating final high fidelity prototypes based on validated designs
User Testing:
Testing with users for usability and other final issues
Results
Product was released and is currently being used by instructors in live courses and metrics are being measured to verify usage. Below is a screengrab of the feature