Teacher Training Video Revisions

Addressing specific pain points for teachers and teacher trainers on the Teacher Training Videos website.

The problem

Russell Stannard is a key name in the world of English language teaching (ELT) and has worked with major publishers such as Macmillan, Express Publishing & Richmond. He has received numerous awards for his work and for his website. Whilst the content on Russell’s site is almost flawless big issues exist with the look and feel of the website.

Several problems existed that were hampering the overrall usability. Fixing these would increase the number of site visitors to Russell's website, which was a major factor in a redesign to increase visitor numbers and retention rates.

No search functionality

Visotors would have to spend considerable time sifting through uncategorised videos.

Unresponsive desktop/tablet layouts

The website design started to break when reduced in size resulting in a less than ideal user experience.

Mobile-first consideration

Given that visitor numbers from mobile devices were increasing it made sense to prioritise mobile first layouts.

Understanding

I began by conducting a brand analysis of the website, learning about its competitors and customer demographics along the way.

Some key takeaways from 55 people surveyed:

Almost three-quarters of teachers surveyed were female.
Most of these users are using desktops 52.7% to access video content, whilst mobile devices are catching up fast and account for 47.3% of users.
Half surveyed are over the age of 40.
The most popular videos on the site by far seem to be ‘Zoom, the flipped classroom, and Google Tools’.
Most surveyed appear to watch videos through YouTube and Facebook feeds.

The eLearning Market

I began by conducting a competitive analysis of how other video course providers are solving the problems around video learning. I chose Skillshare, Udemy, and FutureLearn (3 prominent providers of video-based learning) to fully understand how users can locate, access, and view video learning content. I concentrated on how UI features were laid out, the user flow, and navigation on both desktop and mobile versions.

Speaking to the users

I felt it fundamental to understand more about people’s true intentions for watching training videos, at this stage. This led me to design approximately 10 questions to understand more about the users and what they were looking to seek and gain from the website.

‘‘I use teachertraining videos to learn more about how to use Zoom and other practical tips or lessons, especially the Google tools suite’’.

Frances Wagner

TEACHER TRAINER

'Lots of ugly icons with all of those horrible colours! Also just trying to find the content I want is time consuming when it needn’t be’’.

Maurice Smith

ELT TEACHER

''What is missing? A search function, a menu making it easier to find what I want, and videos sorted by date/length. Furthermore, getting rid of unnecessary buttons such as ‘click to sign up or create an account’’.

Matilda Ellis

ELT TEACHER

Analysing the results

An affinity map is often used to group similar observations together. I used it to measure several key issues which were common among the participants surveyed.

Synthesising further

I grouped the results into several categegories to go deeper into the surveyed data and gleen more from the results.

Further research methods

Another tool I utilised was the 2×2 matrices. This helped me to better understand the relationships between things on a spectrum. I used this to map issues important to the websites users versus business goals. It also helped me prioritise which issues needed dealing with first.

8 out of 10 users wanted to ‘search’ for a video and couldn’t.
8 out of 10 users wanted the ‘publish date’ to be viewable on the videos.
10 out of 10 users wanted the menu bar to be redesigned.
7 out of 10 of users did not like the design of the videos and felt they needed simplifying.

Taking the research and ideating

Having reviewed the research the problems became clear leading me to simple wireframing before moving into more higher fidelity solutions.

Suggestions and redesigns

The new menu bar condenses the amount of information by being more organised. The most essential points are moved to the right-hand side. Key features such as the videos and the ability to search are now in the middle of the page to assist the user to find what they need

Intuitive and welcome home screen

The new homepage design offered a bright and inviting design clearly prioritising the video search and a global search. What is more, is the page clearly indicates the benefits and deprioritises non essential content to the right hand side.

East to scroll to segment stages of a video

The newly updated video section contains the possibility for users to scan by particular time stamps of the video accompanied by a description for each section, something favoured by teachers when lecturing.

Intuitive search, favourites and trending videos

The new search feature made it helpful for the users to navigate to desired and relevant content and the addition of the 'trending' button made it useful for teachers who wanted to find out the latest teaching trends or methods for their work.

Validation/User Testing

With the new designs we ran a survey to get inputs and feedback before being developed. Here are some of the results from that survey.

10/10 surveyed

... found the new menu layout to be clearer and faster to find relevant videos.

9/10 surveyed

... users greatly appreciate the new search function and found the whole process much more intuitive.

7/10 surveyed

... like the signup option for new videos being less prominent on the site and shifted to the bottom of the homepage.

8/10 surveyed

... said the new videos section is a vast improvement along with the improvements made in responsive design.

9/10 surveyed

... found the publish date really useful for newly updated videos.

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