Auteur Academy: A masterclass platform for content creators

A walkthrough of my design process, decisions, and learnings while designing the masterclass app for content creators.

As a member of the10kdesignersUI/UX Design cohort, I was assigned with the task of designing a masterclass platform in a niche of my choice. The idea was to put my skills to test and apply the learnings from the cohortto design the onboarding, browse feed, course detail and check-out flow for the E-Learning platform.I chose the niche to be “content creation” since this seemed unique and challenging to me as a designer.

During the research, I found a couple of pain-points but one thing was common among all the resources I came across and through the research survey, that people struggle to finish or often quit an online course. This sparked the question — How might we help the user stay motivated and lead them to complete the enrolled courses?

Auteur Academyis an E-Learning platform for aspiring and budding Content Creators to learn from experts in their field. Apart from being an app designed for content creators, the app tries to strike balance between following:

Users getting some amount of familiar experience (in terms of interface and design patterns) to the existing apps in the E-learning segment so that they can easily navigate; and

Adding new features to improve overall engagement and interaction with the app.

Key features of the app

Live events & workshops for the users to interact with the instructors during the course.

A series of challenges (with difficulty levels) that users can take during the course which are like assignments that they need to complete which can help users to apply what they’ve learned, build confidence, get feedback from the instructors & earn rewards in exchange.

Gamification features for various activities on the app like rewards, points and ability to redeem points earned to get perks like access exclusive content, live events and discounts on their next billing cycle and referrals.

Who would have imagined that you could make a living while playing video games and broadcasting it.? How many aspiring writers believed they could make money from their work, or how many teens believed they could make money by filming humorous videos in their backyard?

During my research, I observed this segment has been growing enormously. Having a personal brand or a distribution channel can give creators an edge in their career and is a great way to express themselves & follow their passion. Also, with time, creators develop their own style, but to create content they need encouragement and feedback to build confidence & gain momentum; this is where a platform like Auteur Academy can be a great resource where users can learn from experts in the niche.

To find solutions for the problem, I followed a 4D approach: Discover, Define, Design & Deliver. These phases had various steps involved in the design process and helped to define the overall scope of work that was needed to be done.

Research

Starting with this stage, I drew from research articles on Online Courses (MOOCs), enrollment statistics, completion rates, creator economy — and I came across the following information:

3.While reading about ways to improve completion rates, motivation and learning, I came across show notes from an episode of the Learning Business Podcastwhere speakers mentioned a lot of concepts and aspects behindHuman motivation and learning. Out of all the following excerpt stood out for me the most:

5. The Creator Earning Benchmark report 2021 by Influencer Marketing-Hub states that “The entire creator economy’s estimated valuation is around $104.2 billion” and “The global market size valuation for influencer marketing is estimated at $13.8 billion, more than double what it was in 2019. (Source-Statista)

I tried to gather meaningful insights from these resources to find solutions for an E-Learning app targeted towards the Content Creation segment.

The Gap

The competition had no clear way to maintain user engagement:

User Research & Survey

The research so far indicated thatuser engagementandmotivationwas important, and in order to understand users’ current state, problems, and desired change, I conducted a survey targeted towardspeople who wish to or have been creating content online. The questions were based on three aspects:

Their current reality

Obstacles that stop them

Where they want to be

What was the most difficult part of taking a course online? Why?

What motivated you to take an online course in the first place?

Tell me about a time you had to do something difficult and accomplished it during a course.

What according to you would motivate you to complete an online course?

What is your motivation behind creating content or getting into this field?

The Main Insight: None of the E-learning apps, according to the survey participants, used motivation & engagement to help users achieve their goals.

Users felt the need to interact with fellow participants and instructors and build a network to get feedback and mentorship.

Lack of practical application of the skills learned to gain confidence.

Some users struggled to allocate time to completing the syllabus & class sessions.

Design

As the picture started getting clear, I started by making the information architecture to give the app a basic structure, features and flows.

After laying out the information architecture, I created the user flow to understand the paths users would take. This gave me the chance to improve the user experience while navigating through the app.

Now it was time to create wireframes based on the above research, information architecture and user flow; creating paper-wireframes gave the opportunity to explore and iterate different layouts quickly.

After narrowing down on the wireframes, I worked on creating a design system for the app to make sure it stays consistent in its design.

The outcome of all the research, brainstorming and design thinking was an app with a seamless onboarding and navigational experience that allowed users to take courses around content creation. The dark mode gave a premium and trendy look to the app. Using shades of a deep sea was intentional and symbolizes the depth of knowledge users can explore and gain through the platform.

A prototype is a primitive representation or version of a product. The goal of a prototype is to test the flow of a design solution and gather feedback on it before constructing the final product. The prototype of the app can be accessed via the link given below:

I’m so thankful to have gone through the complete UX process of designing a product so I can understand what it’s like in practise. That said, here are a few takeaways & learnings.

Community Feature: It can enhance the social and collaborative learning experience by providing a safe and comfortable space to facilitate discussion, introducing different perspectives from peers

Try more iterations: There is always a room for improvement. I’d improve and refine the design to increase the usability aspect with feedback.

Adding accountability to the mix: Chances of success increase to 95 percent when users have accountability, I found a great resource byBarrett Wissman on accountability and success.

More in-depth research:During this project, I feel that the primary research data wasn’t sufficient and not enough niche based. I would try to invest more time in the primary research to better understand the needs of the target users.

WCAG Considerations:Great digital products are made for everyone’s enjoyment. Somewhere during the visual design stage, I realized that the design might not be very accessible and made a few changes, but going back and changing everything would delay the project. Next time, I would create designs that meet the diverse needs of the users who would engage with the products.