The scroll-down above gives you a sneak peak of some sections I’ve broken the page up into. First, there’s Most Popular:

Courses taken from here

Popular courses aren’t necessarily what users are looking for immediately, but might pique their interest whilst browsing.

This is followed by Categories You Follow as a way to break up the otherwise monotonous grid.

Unlike “Recommended” and “Discover”, Categories You Follow gives users more power to scroll through genres without the tedium of having to browse the actual courses.

Then there’s this. Certainly my most ambitious proposal in terms of backend development, What Your Friends Are Taking puts the Facebook/Google login buttons to use. Coursera could certainly recommend courses to you based on what your friends and contacts are taking, adding an exciting possibility of enrolling in courses alongside people you know.

When you can take courses with friends, online learning becomes more and more like a real classroom.

My Courses

As a bonus, I added a Recently Played section on “My Courses” to deal with the following complaint:

It’s been a while since I revisited the class I’m taking, and I need a refresher on some material before I launch into the next section. But it takes some time for me to find the last lecture I watched, and sometimes I can’t even remember which one I opened last.

Students usually take anything between one and four courses, and rarely take five or more. Even with this addition, there’s plenty of space without having an endless rabbit hole of scrolling.

I didn’t spend too much time fiddling with the current profile page…but this was important

Final Thoughts

When I sign up for online learning platforms like Coursera, I always lose interest. My tweaks were an attempt to make the app a more engaging experience and see if I could make visually pleasing yet pragmatic interfaces. However, my design process was conducted without access to Coursera’s internal research or design strategy and I’m sure there are parts of the current interface that are specifically designed to meet certain internal metrics.

What I Learned

I started this redesign with the intent of conducting it as a “sprint”. With a limited timeframe, I had to rely somewhat on the product’s original visual language and not get too caught up with creating new visual motifs or elements. Instead, I focused my time on reorganizing the product instead of reinventing it.

This was also the first project where I extensively used prototyping software. I was introduced to Principle and realized there was a lot more I could communicate through animation than I could through flat screens.

What’s Next?

After completing the two-week sprint I set up for myself, I knew there was more I would want to do if I moved forward with this project. In this case study, my redesigns covered most of the early user journey, before the user enrolls in a course. I imagine that diving deeper into the user experience after enrollment would challenge me to come to new understandings of the product.