CoLucidation
Empowering deeper learning through collaboration.
Project Details
My Role
My main roles were project manager, presenter, and information architect. I also contributed to the graphic design, prototyping, and research.
Timeline
Aug 2019 - Dec 2019
Methods
Surveys, Contextual Inquiry, Divergent Ideation, Rapid Prototyping
Tools
Figma, Illustrator, G Suite
Design Challenge
Create a case study to show how small changes to the Lucidchart UI can lead to improvements in onboarding.
Proposal
Story time
Jessica Kim is an employee at a mid sized corporation that works on a interdisciplinary project team. Her company just purchased a license from Lucidchart to help improve internal communication.
To familiarize themselves with the software her team decided to work on a mock project together. Jessica was pleased to find that Lucidchart had intuitive collaboration features and she was able to communicate easily with the in window messaging and video chat features, so as she ran into problems she could easily ask coworkers for help.
Based on our research, implementing working Indicators, video chat, and reordering the hierarchy in Lucidchart will improve the collaborative experience, while decreasing overall teaching load and new user’s time to learn.
Working Indicators
Will help people co-create under poor internet connections or long distance co-working.
Video Chat
When communication richness increases, peoples ability to learn from each other also increases.
Reorder the Hierarchy
Moving collaborative features up in the hierarchy will increase their visibility and increase ease of use.
Our Design Journey
Disclaimer: Our journey did not happen in a linear fashion, but for the sake of storytelling, I am going to be displaying our process as a logical progression.
Stakeholder Research
Contextual inquiry
We began by acting as new stakeholders and exploring Lucidchart and its features, while a teammate took notes. We did this both one on one and in group settings.
Takeaways
Participants in groups tended to onboard faster.
The current collaboration features are a pain point for many people.
Internal data analysis
We found that among small teams the “Share with teams” feature had seen the greatest increase in usage.
We also found that “Collaborate and Share” was the fourth most visited help center guide during the first week after registration.
Survey
How likely are you to ask others for help when learning a new software?
What is your ideal way to collaborate online for a project?
What software do you normally use to collaborate with others?
Insights
Based on our contextual inquiry people learn quicker when in groups, thus onboarding in groups could be a fruitful path to explore.
If we can make the current collaborative features perform in line with peoples expectations we can improve the collaborative experience.
The internal data shows that teams using Lucichart have a desire to collaborate on projects together.
According to our survey, when people are having trouble learning a new software, they prefer to ask a friend.
Google and Skype dominate collaborative spaces and could be great exemplars.
Time delays in communication can cause disconnects that disallow communal learning.
Problem Framing
We determined that at its core, onboarding is learning. Learning happens most effectively when ones psychological needs are met.
Here, we show the list of needs we found most important for learning arranged in a similar manner to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
We distilled these needs down to two design principles.
Visibility,
Allows people to feel safe to explore, because they know that there is someone looking out for them, as well as what lies ahead.
Desirability,
Is achieved when people feel like their needs are being accommodated and welcomed.
Expanding the scope
After creating our principles, we decided that the current scope of onboarding was too narrow to address what we have identified as the root issue, a lack of collaboration.
Thus, we expanded the overall scope of our inquiry and created a new focus category we are calling, learning collaboratively.
Creating a new model
The current model requires new stakeholders to learn in isolation. While, Lucidchart supplies all of the teaching materials.
Our proposed model creates a new learning pathway that will improve collaborative learning by creating a new pathway for new stakeholders to learn., while alleviating part of the teaching responsibility from Lucidchart.
Idea Generation
After several rounds of ideation we sorted our proposals into 3 categories.
Barrier Reduction
The first of which was barrier reduction. We hoped that by reducing the number of potential pain points, we could improve the collaborative experience.
Community
Our other leaping off point was community building. We thought supporting the growth of a collaboration community that we could improve the collaborative experience.
Communication
The last space that we explored was improving communication. The two main ideas that we settled on were improving the messaging and introducing a video/audio chat feature.
Prompt development
At this point we were given a new directive from Lucid. “Make the UI changes small and implementable.”
Thus, after doing quick whiteboard builds of each we found that communication held the most promise for improving onboarding under the new directive of small and implementable.
Exemplar collection
We continued our ideation by taking our raw ideas and evaluating how similar concepts are being implemented by other organizations.
Examples: Left to right
Google docs share button / active cursor indicator
Facebook messengers active typing indicator
Skype’s video conferencing layout
Insights
Contextual alerts can improve the collaborative experience by helping people maintaining a connection to their fellow collaborators.
Googles version of the share button has become the expected form, which differs from the current share button in Lucidchart.
Reducing clicks does not necessarily reduce paint points.
Prototyping
Concept Testing
We started by creating short team based tests to determine if being able to see and talk with your teammates while collaborating on a document together would help spread knowledge among team members.
“When I am confused, I am can ask my teammates or I can learn just by watching them do stuff.”
“I learned this stuff faster in a team, since I had someone to ask.”
Behavioral Testing
Once we had validated that our concept was worth pursuing we began testing the appearance and functionality, by using paper prototypes and wizard of oz style testing .
“I would definitely use the messaging feature more, if it didn’t take up so much of the screen. ”
Insights
We found that most stakeholders prefer a video chat window is smaller and more responsive.
Also many stakeholders would like to have the option of just voice chat.
Almost all testers agreed that the redesigned messaging would improve team work.
Next Steps
All in on collaboration
After months of research, testing and design. We believe that the most effective way to improve the onboarding experience, would be to focus more attention on collaboration and the benefits that it can bring to Lucidcharts stakeholders.
