User experience, or UX as it is popularly known, has become the talk of the town these days. Irrespective of their line of business, organizations are now focussing on providing users a better experience of their products or services. A host of techniques are used to arrive at a design that best suits their business and their clientele.
Do you, an e-learning course designer, sense the commonality here? Can you take a leaf out of UX design to create a better E-learning course that makes your course stand apart from the crowd? Yes, of course. UX can be seamlessly extended to the e-learning industry as well. Just as a UX designer strives to arrive at a design that is user-centric, a course designer should work towards designing a course that enhances the learning experience.
Read on to know some of the UX techniques that can be applied in designing a learner-centric course.
Journey Maps
Journey maps help designers understand how a user experiences their products or services, by capturing the key touchpoints of a user. A journey map is based on the user persona. While designing your course, create different learner personas and a journey map for each persona. This technique helps create courses that are more aligned to the learners’ perspective.
Contextual Inquiry
Contextual inquiry is a popular user-centric design technique that loosely translates to a semi-structured interview. This is all about observing people in their natural setting and then interviewing them to understand the gaps. Create a prototype of the course and test it in a natural setting. This technique helps gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of the course.
A/B Testing
One more effective UX design technique which can be used for course design is the technique of A/B testing. A/B testing or Split testing, as it is popularly known, involves comparing two versions of design with just a single varying element. This helps designers choose a design that best fits a particular target audience. Create two prototype designs and test it on the sample participants to understand learners’ responses. Use A/B testing on your learning portal if your LMS supports one or you can also choose to do the split testing manually.
These are some important, but not exhaustive UX design techniques. Use these while designing your next course and enhance your learners’ experience.
