Background

I’ve been part of the Revel Mobile project since 2014. The initial work was focused on how we might migrate our textbook content to a more mobile friendly platform. The experience took the backseat to making sure the content was performant and readable on all devices. This did, however spark some interesting concepts.

My role

UX Designer, UX Manager, Creative Direction

Early concepts

Our earliest iteration was a 1:1 adaption of the web app. A lot of the early work was transforming homework tools into mobile experiences. The UX team that I lead iterated, card sorted and tested what would become tools for the student to complete any activity on their device.

What we learned

While these tools were super cool and went on to be used for other Pearson Apps, such as Aida, we had very little usage. We learned that students weren’t using their mobile devices as they would their computers.

Co-design

I facilitated a co-design with 7 students, discussing their study habits, writing “love/hate” letters, story mapping and sketching their experience.

Key Insights

• Completing homework is reaching a goal. Progress is important to encouraging progress,

• Most participants used study apps such as Quizlet and Chegg to support their studies

• The participants read on their mobile device, particularly in between activities or when “bored”

• Often, participants will listen to videos on their mobile device to keep concepts fresh

Hypothesis - 2018

We believe that by providing learners with a variety of brief study activities that are available anywhere, allow for interruption and communicate through reminders and positive encouragement, we will help the learner be better prepared for class.

Desired Outcomes

• Steady repeat sessions by unique ids, ideally 10-20 or more a week.

• A high task completion rate (65%) either per or across sessions, as measured by either a low drop off rate, or a 65% percent visit rate to activity summary screen

• 15% adoption by Revel users

• Positive Appstore reviews

Competitive analysis

Our research team conducted a competitive analysis, looking at our competitors (McGraw Hill, Cengage) as well as various study apps (Quizlet, Duolingo, Khan Academy) and a few analogous examples (oriented on goal setting; exercise, weight loss, financial).

Key Insights

• Edtech apps are robust feature wise, maybe too robust. Usually the experience is serviceable, but certainly not delightful

• The study apps are more affective in engagement. Duolingo, for example is fun and communicative. Khan Academy is shallow, encouraging, with short, impactful content

Userflows

After synthesis and a concept exercise, I put together our two main flows. Our Study flow we decided to elevate into its own task, instead of associated with the chapters of the course content - a decision I still question.

2018 Design

We designed it to be clean and simple, if not a little boring.

What we learned

• By positive reviews, we learned that learners are using the app to Study. However, looking at google analytics revealed that more of the time is spent in reading content and not “Study”, which I think says a lot about the mental model.

• Most of the time, however was spent listening to content. the Audio playlist revealed itself as the Hero feature.

Audio

The audio playlist was a feature added to address accessibility. However, it has the highest usage in the application and extends sessions by 50%

“I can listen to the text and even read when I don’t have internet. This is truly the future of all textbooks!”​

-Appstore review

2021 Iteration

In Q4, 2020, we started exploring how we might simplify this experience even further. We did this by observing the data around how learners used the app. As mentioned our main two focuses within the app were reading and listening. decided to simplify navigation to elevate these two work flows

Desired outcomes

• To increase assignment completion across session

• To promote good study habits by refactor what we mean when we say study

• To elevate the Revel brand by making it a delightful consumer facing experience

Revised architecture

We consolidated “content”, “assignments” and" “scores” into one simple workflow in order to reduce redundancies. We updated study by associating suggestions to user performance, creating randomly generated quizzes based on how they previously performed.

Revised study

We rethought our study experience, building it based on user performance.

Instead of pushing flashcard/key term based studies, we instead created randomly generated reviews and elevated topics that the learner should focus on.

The small pivot aligned Study to support exam study more than homework study.

User testing

We ran an unmoderated study on Usertesting.com and found the following:

Key Insights

• 6 out of 7 participants were encouraged by seeing their streak and weekly average. The wouldn’t want it gamified any further.

• If they believe that the questions and topics we provide them are the ones they need to work on, they will use this to improve their understanding. However, if our backend logic doesn’t match theirs, the won’t trust it.

• This feature applies more to the high achieving students. We need further study to understand how to appeal to those who need the help most.

Visual design

I have only just started spinning up concepts around the visual design. The goal is to abide by our guidelines of Clarity, Focus and Depth and use the textbook covers to elevate the brand.

Our current thinking is that these colors will define elements such as performance metrics and progress - so long as we can make them accessible.

Next steps

We will be testing the whole flow in February as well as run a desirability test on the visual design. This is currently slated for a June 2021 release.

Reflection

Revel mobile has been an exercise in patience and iteration. Since I worked at agencies before coming to Pearson, I have never seen a product through multiple lifecycles. It has been a wonderful experience to see the evolution of a product as the user needs evolve, or at least become more focused. I can’t say I have ever been satisfied by the releases of Revel mobile, but that has only driven me to keep pushing.