IXL.com is the world's most popular subscription-based learning site for K-12 with over 5 million users. IXL would like to get a better understanding of their admin account feature's ease of use.
Key research questions and areas:
1. What are notable behaviors, preferences, barriers and technologies that impact usage of the admin account?
2. Identify needs and opportunities to inform the product design strategy.
3. Observe and understand users current editing processes.
5-week field study to assess the effectiveness of IXL's admin account offerings as participants used them in their natural environment. Study participants were located across the United States.
Phase 1: Conduct user surveys for target demographic.
Phase 2: 30-minute contextual interviews with 50 users.
Phase 3: 3 weeks of task based remote testing.
Exploration and deep dive was conducted for companies in the same industry sector or market niche who compete with this company’s products and services.
Demographic: Users who access the account 2+/week. Also access account on mobile
Gender: 50/50
Ethnicity: mix
Devices: Mobile (iPad and Android devices) and Web browser
Gauge user emotions and feedback toward current management program using survey creator Typeform
"Every program we use allows us to modify our enrollment at any time, why can't yours?"
"The lower price point for this product is not worth the hassle it brings to our district and schools."
"We should be able to manage this on our end entirely and have ownership of our data."
Heatmapping tool CrazyEgg, was used to moderate participants who were instructed to perform the task to add, edit, remove, and reactivate student accounts. Results indicate that a large number of users did not recognize the call-to-action links and buttons in the existing design.
Heuristic evaluation was performed to compare and better understand the usability gaps in the existing admin portal. The team agreed the UI should assist users in recognizing preexisting patterns rather than recalling information.
Recording all observations, an affinity map was created to visualize user concerns and needs.
A user journey map was crafted to tell the story of the customer’s experience: from initial contact, through the process of engagement, and into a long-term partnership.
The business decided to build the product in-house. 10% of users or three large districts composed of 50 admins with 100,000 affected users were selected as a sample group to test feature during the next enrollment cycle. Special instructions and regulations were given to these districts to track longitudinal success rates of automated secure FTP.