Rethinking Digital Education

The learning platform Moodle was published in 2002 and has not received any contemporary design updates since then. The structure and the visual appearance are no longer up-to-date and need revision in order to be a reliable service as a digital learning platform in the times of homeschooling. Students and teachers depend on it.

With the spread of COVID-19 and increasing restrictions on the public, state institutions such as schools are also closing. Children and young people can no longer study in their usual classrooms. They have to adapt to the current situation and attend classes from home. At this point in time, many schools lack a digital teaching concept. That's why they switched to digital learning platforms.

In order to meet this requirement and to counteract this problem on the most frequently used learning platform, we redesigned the Moodle app. COVID-19 should not be significantly in the foreground of expediency. The app should still be relevant afterwards.

Our focus was on understanding the user and exploring different solutions. According to the idea "design the right thing. Design the thing right." we wanted to solve a relevant problem and validate our solutions based on user feedback in the process.

The final concept comprises a complete, all-encompassing, and reliable application. Thanks to the fast and intuitive navigation, everyday school life can be mastered quickly and easily. Every use case is covered, from a digital desk and a task overview to an extensive subject overview to a chat and calendar. The details of the core features are further described below.

Over the course of this project we have used many design methods that should help us with process control. This gave us an overview of the tasks and was able to gradually expand the insights gained and then apply them in a targeted manner. We worked very closely with the users in order to be able to validate and iterate our decisions at any time.

To get a detailed overview of the functional scope and the information architecture of the application, a screen flow is created. It is noticeable that Moodle has a very deep information architecture. This supports the knowledge gathered previously from the reviews that Moodle is not easy to use. Content is often difficult to access and is scattered on many different levels.

With a SWOT analysis, all aspects of Moodle should be divided into four categories: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This helps us to define problems, prioritize features and guide the decision-making process. Due to the many levels and incorrect prioritization, the loss of information is far too high. Accordingly, through better prioritization and differentiation, Moodle has enormous opportunities to be a comprehensive and powerful tool for everyday school life.

Interviews are carried out to find out the needs of current users of the app. This should help us to understand where further problems lie. In the interviews, we gave the interviewees additional tasks that they should solve in the app. Above all, the clarity of Moodle is criticized. The people to be tested often fail in the simplest of tasks and find certain content difficult.

We evaluated the interviews with user story mappings. With this technology we can get an overall picture of the user in his task and present it clearly. Based on these mappings, insights are filtered out and divided into “top, flop & need”. This subdivision is very helpful in the later course of the project. In this way, functions and features that are necessary can be better filtered out and classified.

For the further decision-making steps, we wanted to create a common vision in the team that would help us to move forward together and prevent misunderstandings in communication.

The information architecture is determined based on the prioritization of functions and features. During the process, this changes twice because of the results from the user testing. One of the biggest problems when creating the IA is cross-linking the different pages.

The design principles are based on the adjective clusters. As a basic building block for the following conception, it is essential to create a guideline so that the decision-making process proceeds step by step and purposefully. They create a basis for us to define the app on a meta-level. Basic principles for the following conception process help to find uniform solutions.

First ideas are collected in order to visualize and substantiate the results from the research part. Here, general considerations for the design of the individual main pages such as the subjects, chat, profile or courses are outlined. This is an important step in the iteration process. In a further sketching phase, more specific considerations are made about navigation and the dashboard.

In order to test the information architecture and the sketches for their functionality, they are combined. The sketches are arranged in the information architecture. This checks whether all the necessary functions and cross-links are available. An overview of the information hierarchy and sketches help to check that everything has been taken into account.

In order to check the information architecture and hierarchical levels of the first wireframes, an initial testing is carried out. The result are that the proposed information architecture works. Tasks can be carried out, content is easily recognized. The information architecture will be further elaborated in the further course, as it scored positively in the test.

In a second testing it is noted that the profile picture in the top left is not perceived as a profile. This can be due to the fact that a placeholder image was used, but also because users do not suspect it at this point. The profile picture in the top left is then changed to a burger menu, where the user can then, for example, make specific settings.

After the final version of the wireframes, the first attempts to translate them into a visual language start. This sets the first milestones for the further visual design of this project. Each team member generates different screens with their own vision for the visual appearance of the app.

We underestimated the scope of the app by far. That is why we had to distribute the tasks precisely so that we could manage the workload in the given time. In doing so, we learned above all to communicate such things and, if necessary, to give up work if you don't have the time. Prioritizing the tasks helped us to achieve a realistic result and not to lose ourselves in all unimportant details.

Wanting to do everything perfectly and precisely has often cost us time in the decision-making process. Perfectionism in design has its advantages and disadvantages.

The use of the methods and artifacts are immensely helpful for process control, but as a result unique features of a design can be lost.

With the current status of the final prototype, it would be possible to carry out further testing in the future - also quantitatively and not just qualitatively. In addition, an increased fault tolerance could be built in to increase usability. Other roles in the app should be worked out, including parents and teachers.

Already in the research phase, it became clear that all existing applications were incomplete and inadequately implemented. The market is also large and stable. That is why an all-encompassing and reliable learning platform is necessary. Accordingly, the redesign of Moodle should be brought to all German educational institutions.