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E-learning platforms development. How to improve your educational app

E-learning platforms development. How to improve your educational app

As quarantine continues to disrupt our daily lives, schools have gone online and schoolchildren are learning from home in unprecedented numbers. E-learning platforms and are suddenly overwhelmed with the amount of traffic and need quick solutions to keep their services up and continue to improve. While some industries can work remotely, interacting with colleagues, friends, and family has gone virtual. However, online teaching or digital learning in general— and keeping children engaged is the latest challenge.

For many edtech apps, this means a rapid expansion of capabilities to keep up with surging demand. Here are a few of our tips how to improve your online learning app.

 

How to improve your e-learning platform:

Table of contents:
Technical improvements

  1. Data security
  2. Cross-platform
  3. Operational reliability
  4. Improve UX

Improvement of features

  1. E-learning analytics
  2. In-app chat with fellow students and teachers
  3. Gamification

Technical improvements

 

1. Data security

One major consideration in online teaching is how to protect sensitive data. User credentials, information about payment and personally identifiable information need to be secure also in the learning management system. Users should always have the rights reserved to manage their own data and exclude themselves from data collection at any point.

In e-learning there is all kinds of data, such as confidential personal user information but also public and shared educational materials. Parents need to understand how the online learning platforms use the data. The platform might collect data for pedagogical purposes, for example. Explaining it and being transparent helps all involved parties feel safer. In the European Union, GDPR regulations give a good framework for data protection.

“Like with all applications, we should make sure that the data transmission of the platform is as limited as possible and the data cannot be accessed by any unauthorized party. For example, the Finnish education supervisory bodies have very high standards and require the servers to be kept within the European borders.”

says Bartosz Kuczyński, one of Espeo’s tester for quality assurance
 

2. Cross-platform  

If your learning management system is not cross-platform conform, now is the time to upgrade. Accessibility in class and outside is vital. It’s important that students can log into their accounts on personal laptops but as well on their smartphones to make it easier to view information quickly and from any device. Especially in times like now, when students are only able to complete assignments, go over learned material and prepare for tests from home. Offering the online learning experience from mobile and web is one of the easiest way to reach users and to meet their demands. This also makes sense when thinking about the communication between educators and parents. A mobile app with instant push notifications can help to parents to stay up to date with course content, general administration and data management.

E-learning platforms development. How to improve your educational app
 

3. Operational reliability 

Performance tests ensure operational reliability. These tests simulate typical user activity and can model high traffic times. These can either be general performance tests to indicate the speed of the system’s reaction and therefore sport where improvements are needed or we can undertake stress tests to see how many users can use the app at the same time within the current setup.

When we talk about reliability you have to know current metrics related to your application. It helps you estimate how the potential increase of users may affect the server performance. It’s important to find potential bottlenecks within the e-learning platform. The first step is to gather all data that help to investigate, such as application logs, which includes eros and data traces. Server logs such as the number of requests, the frequency of requests, rush hours, and CPU/RAM use also fall here. Finally, database logs identify slow queries and a number of queries. As logs give you the information about such metrics, it is wise to aggregate them and analyze them.

There are many tools on the market that measure and aggregate these metrics and be ready for critical situations. One of these types of tools is application performance monitoring, or APM.

“Using APM you will be able to identify application weaknesses, find out the most used parts of the application that may be worth improving. Sometimes, changes in a few parts of an application can affect general performance positively.”

said Bartosz Michałak
 

4. Improve UX 

UX research is not just important when launching a new product but also once it’s on the market. In edtech, complex updates often fall in a new semester, when students and teachers are the busiest. If the new release is complicated and confusing, this might cause negative feedback. Involving professionals can help to understand problems and prioritize where to improve first.

E-learning platforms development. How to improve your educational app

Edtech apps can consist of great media traffic, like sharing documents, instant chat, etc. So the UX is also related to the performance of all these kinds of third party layers. We should always be thinking about the complexity of the app. The heavier an app, the more it will affect the UX. For example, lots of animations can drop the frames in mobile in a similar heavier HTML structure can reduce performance on web applications. You can improve the UX by trimming down the amount of data that is transmitted to the bare minimum. Possible other tricks such as caching and offline persistence may be used.

Pro tip:

“I would implement a feedback inquiry, so the users could tell you directly what their needs are. Then I would sort those opinions, categorize and prioritize them for the implementation,”

suggested UX designer, Mateusz Małys

With more users, you might want to consider how it affects the UX and how much it will suffer under the increased strain. From a frontend perspective, content can load gradually, using techniques like lazy loading which is a general rule for all learning platforms, not only edtech. If your e-learning platforms are used in more than one country, you should consider using content delivery network services to serve images and other files. CDN allows you to reduce network latency by using various techniques. For example, when the teacher shares a heavy file to the entire class, a CDN service can cache it and your server won’t need to serve that file anymore.

Improvement of features

“It is hard to tell what modifications are needed. Every client has their own idea of what’s important. From the backend side, it can be simply a general performance improvement. Sometimes the app does not need to be fast or fancy but rather reliable, meaning no server downtimes, strict data protection. We can deliver what the client needs,”

explained edtech developer for tools like TinyApp, Tomasz Maka

Many learning platforms would benefit from interaction options such as live chats, conference calls and video conferencing. But these are also ambitious features and we always need to test how strenuous they would become for the servers, so that it won’t affect the learning experience negatively.

Live classrooms, file sharing, online tutorial, interactive worksheets for students, timed testing systems, various messaging and conferencing options are a few of many possible features.

Below I prepared just a couple of additional features an educational App can benefit from. It does not mean that these are the only or most important features and that everyone learning platform needs to have these. In the end, the sort of features an application should have, depends on what is relevant from a business perspective to the product owner and what problems he wants to solve for teachers, students and parents.

 

1. E-learning analytics

By collecting data about the activity of a student, e-learning can help deliver insights about the performance and detect fields where improvements are needed and can in turn help with defining the best online trainings. A comprehensive analysis of big data can be valuable for online education and e-learning impact. Teachers can improve instructor effectiveness by tailoring their plans and training paths to individual needs and also share information with parents easier and based on data rather than on simple observations.

Thanks to that, educators can use the data to develop behavior-model algorithms through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data. It ensures that students receive the best possible assistance.

E-learning platforms development. How to improve your educational app
 

 2. In-app chat with fellow students and teachers

One rather basic feature which can have an enormous impact is the option for in-app chats with fellow students. During remote schooling, kids can easily feel isolated and lack contact with fellow students. Enabling students to get in touch with schoolmates and teachers to discuss homework assignments or just chat makes a big difference. Viable options can be the possibility for instant messaging, forums and video conferencing. Besides that, it helps children learn how to navigate as a digital citizen and how to virtually communicate with each other.

 

3. Gamification

Point scoring, competition, leaderboards — gamification has a wide range of use in e-learning. It’s not surprising that it is an element that is more and more added to learning management systems. Don’t confuse gamification with wasting time. Play is a fundamental principle of early childhood development and it can be easily implemented for e-learning. But when I talk about gamification, I mean a tool for driving motivation.

E-learning platforms development. How to improve your educational app

It is not about online geography puzzles or anything else that simply is just a game and its secondary objective is that kids are learning something while having fun. In fact, it rather means that it is a way to bring a bit more fun into things students normally don’t like to do and in turn to increase their internal motivation. So, the question gamification answers is how to make learning more engaging. It also is a tool to track student’s progress and introduces a competitive spirit as students try to improve their rankings. There are many possibilities on how gamification can look like on an e-learning platform.

Final thoughts on how to improve e-learning platform

When it comes to learning platforms, teachers, students, and parents need one platform for all as a pedagogical assistant.

Whether you’re looking for developers who can help you upgrade your learning platform for the upcoming challenges or would like to create your own applications, our team of edtech experts and developers can help you prepare the best online learning platform. Drop us a line if you’d like to get a free consultation.

More on e-learning platforms:

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Blockchain Design Software

Designing for blockchain: How to build trust through good UX

I recently sat down with blockchain product designer, Ariel Hajbos to get his take on some essential elements of good blockchain design and some of the trends in blockchain app UX. Creating an elegant, responsive design is important in all web and mobile projects, but designing for blockchain poses new challenges. Trust-building features and even color choice are vital to an overall comfortable user experience.

Blockchain UX and UI remains a major hurdle for people to actually use the technology. In an earlier interview, blockchain consulting director, Dominik Zyskowski said good design is the key to widespread adoption. “Designers,” he said, “have to create a simple, frictionless experience to attract more users.”

So far, blockchain-based apps act much differently than traditional ones. For us who work with the underlying tech every day, it’s obvious, but if you don’t, blockchain apps may not behave as you expect. They tend to lag — and when you’re seeing charts, numbers, and of course your account balance, this can cause a lot of anxiety. Building trust through good UX is the main goal. Designing for blockchain apps involves regular feedback and trust-building features that create a pleasant user experience. Better UX will encourage more consumers to incorporate the technology into their daily lives.

Ariel Hajbos is a product designer at Espeo Blockchain and has been designing for blockchain projects during his time on the team. He started his career in graphic design and has since become integral in Espeo’s blockchain design projects such as the derivatives trading platform, CloseCross, and the mobile version of the crypto exchange, Trade. io.

In your opinion what is the most important aspect of blockchain design? What’s challenging about designing for blockchain projects?

I would say that the most important thing when designing for blockchain is that the apps often deal with financial assets — users approach these applications will a lot of distance. They’d like to get to know the apps better, know the deliverables, and know the company that built it. That’s a common thing. So it’s super important in my opinion to always design for trust. My role as a designer is to win this trust from users and communicate the ideas behind the application as well as possible so they feel comfortable using it.

The principle of designing for trust is something which is useful in other categories as well. It’s not only with blockchain, but any kind of application you build, you’d like to achieve this.

That’s an interesting point — about building trust through design. How do you do it, actually? What are some features you’ve incorporated that do this?

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If there are some patterns that users are familiar with that would be the very best first step. Using a design system and being consistent in your blockchain design creates this feeling that everything is sound and everything in the user interface is in its place. It’s also good to avoid jargon — you can’t assume that all your users will know it so it’s good to present things clearly. If you approach it in the proper way — if you keep in mind some things that are important in UX design in general, you can build trust.

The last thing I would say is creating a feedback loop — some kind of active guidance where users see a responsive design. Even if we build something and release it it’s only the beginning of the road so it’s important to be with the users through the whole app-building building process — and its future development. End users should feel as if they have the opportunity to leave their feedback, and that we’re listening and implementing changes.

In some of the projects that you’ve worked on, what were some common features you’ve changed?

Aesthetics, number of clicks, how the app presents data, and the general flow are some features we’ve received feedback on and changed. It’s always good to discuss those matters with the actual users too. It’s a very common thing because we work in an integrative process.  We build something, we analyze it, gather feedback, and correct it — again and again and again to reach our goal no matter what the goal is. Whether it’s a business assumption or usability.

I also encourage product owners to show the UI and UX to the people that will use their app — a demo group — and gather feedback from them.  it’s also good to clash that feedback from the business perspective and then for the user’s perspective and then get something good from that.

What aesthetic changes have end-users asked for and how does it affect blockchain design?

The applications that I built with Espeo were in general, were pretty consistent. They were focused on a goal It had to be achieved according to some of the steps. There wasn’t much space to think about adding something new. However, when we designed the Trade.io mobile application, and they were happy with the UI and UX, they requested we add additional features such as different color modes in the app. We cranked up the interface to add a dark mode and a color mode.

This wasn’t only an aesthetic decision — some of the users were accustomed to shifting between different color modes. It was easier for them to analyze data and they lacked this feature in the app before we added it. While I’m designing for blockchain apps, it doesn’t seem very important at first glance but if you start to think about it but it’s something really helpful when users have to analyze data quickly and act on it.

So it had nothing to do with how the app actually works, just how it looks?

Yes, it was only about how it looks. However, you have to remember if this is a blockchain app so we were struggling with presenting a lot of data, a lot of numbers, and a lot of charts. It’s always in the context of something positive and negative when you gain or lose assets.

For some people, different color approaches for gains and losses were less stressful. Magenta/cyan (pictured above) instead of green/red was an easier approach. It felt less stressful — more like a game. It’s a kind of user approach for such a topic. It’s not only about using a clean and simple minimalistic UI it’s not always the super idea that will satisfy all users.

What values among blockchain app users influence design do you think? I mean blockchain people skew skeptical — they don’t trust anything. How does this influence UX?

Yeah, so there are a few layers to that — first of all users have to trust the machine. It’s important that the user believes that the device is responsive And that he’s getting all the information that he needs to get. It’s also connected to blockchain technology itself.

Since it’s a decentralized technology, we have to think about why users will trust the blockchain and why blockchain technology is so important to them. These are new opportunities and it’s something very exciting. So this trust in the machine and in the algorithm is a challenge for us. Designers have to help users to trust the mechanisms blockchain technology.

Aside from blockchain itself, users have to trust the people building the applications as well. For instance, in the CloseCross app that we helped design, users predict the value of assets in the future and you have to be sure that it’s accurate and that you’ll receive your assets back. To combine those two things the trust for the application itself and the trust in the UI and the UX of the application a designer’s role is to demonstrate this trust.

Reducing cognitive load, guiding with consistency, and displaying messages properly goes a long way. All those things are connected to blockchain design and UI/UX design generally. It’s a designers role to demonstrate these things. With blockchain apps, you have to signal to the user and say ‘hey, you’re fine, your assets are fine, everything is happening as it should.’ Grasping this proper flow is something that I strive for.

How do you get into the minds of everyday users — those who may not know, or really care about how something works, just that it works.

It’s always a matter of communication. You always have to listen to users and also the people you’re working with. Designing for blockchain is a collaborative process. You have to be an open, empathetic person. I have to think about different approaches to look at a problem from a different perspective. It depends on the project —  lots of our projects aren’t structured in a super strict flow.

There’s not always time for a lot of proper research. My role is to always try to understand the product as well as possible — try to pick through it in layers and from different angles of blockchain design. But my job doesn’t end there I also help guide in the implementation phase because I’m one of the few people, along with the product owner who knows the interface entirely.

I have to be a communicative person — I have to speak up with the product owner and present as many methods as possible based on the resources you already have. If there’s a space, I speak up and discuss with the users. If there’s time, I also map out a user story, write a backlog, and discuss it with developers. It’s a matter of constant discussion and analysis.

Which project that you’ve worked on are you the proudest of?

For sure Trade.io and CloseCross. For Trade.io there was already a web platform we didn’t build. Instead, we had to transform and migrate those functionalities and features to a mobile app. That was kind of challenging, however, the client was very helpful during the research part and they delivered a lot of already started wireframes and ideas for the UI. We didn’t build it from scratch but we built on top of something that already existed it was a super nice input at the very beginning that helped us to start from a good level.

With CloseCross, it was a project we helped design this platform in very close corporation with Vahibav Khadikar, the CEO. We had really long and intense sessions analyzing the UI in various versions — we did several versions. We had to think about the features, prototype it rapidly, verify the idea, and then build something on top of that.

CloseCross is a really large application with a lot of design features. As I said earlier, collaboration is something super important — it helps you to come up with really nice ideas and extend your possibilities because there’s no way one person could build something totally from scratch.

What are the main trends in blockchain design?

Trends in blockchain design are constantly changing — but the principles are the same. Design thinking, proper user research, quick evaluation of ideas like low fidelity wireframes. Those are essential tools that deliver really nice outcomes. Designing for blockchain involves trust-building features. The main trend is designing for the global nature of the blockchain — with proper localization and device agnostic.

You’d like to deliver your outcome and deliver the design you working on to as many people as possible so it’s super important also for trust to think about different languages and different devices. You have to design systems that work well across environments. 

Conclusion

Even though one blockchain technology’s greatest strengths is ensuring trust, Many users remain skeptical. Blockchain design is the most important challenge for widespread adoption. Cumbersome user experience will only hamper further adoption of blockchain among the wider public. Effective UX design is essential to create useful, valuable blockchain apps. designing for blockchain apps involves building trust through regular feedback and frictionless navigation.

Getting blockchain design right to make end users comfortable — and maybe not even notice the underlying tech, needs innovative solutions. Hajbos and designers like him are driving greater adoption of blockchain applications.

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Design Software

7 Tips for Good UI Design

7 Tips for Good UI Design

A good UI design increases conversion rates. That’s simple. But how does human-oriented design play into it? The mobile revolution, as well as the web revolution before it, constantly forced us to keep restructuring and reconsidering what simplicity means for human-centered design and practically every experience we create. In the UI user community, we’ve launched a trend called “human-centered” that helps you focus and lead every design project in a particular way.

There are numerous human experiences associated with using an application. They allow you to take a different perspective towards various projects to see how one solution is better than the other. The best ways of solving problems should be based on human needs. Ideally, you should fulfil those needs in a way that involves best practices and technological innovations.

Our team at ESPEO is working daily to accelerate UX performance at the user interface level, understand how to integrate the project with the UX toolbar and make sure that we create our products in a comprehensive way.

user interface design

Tip one: Let yourself be direct – and stay honest

The rule of thumb is to be direct instead of indecisive. This way, you convey your message with certainty and confidence. Your design presents ideas or products determined to contribute to a user’s success. Leaders don’t end their messages with question marks, using hedging expressions such as “perhaps”, “maybe”, “interested?” and “want to?”. Your UI can be bit more authoritative.

Honesty with a user pays off, so in the whole narrative consider social proof instead of just talking about qualities. Nothing will increase your conversion as seriously as being sincere with the users. Showing endorsements and talking about your offering gives a significant performance for a call to action. Therefore, point towards proof of customer satisfaction via references or testimonials. If numbers are large – consider visualization of the data, as it validates your point in a clear way.
 

Tip two: Conversion – ease of use

A good way of achieving that is simply trying out a one-column layout instead of multicolumn. A one-column layout gives clarity and a more consistent narrative. Users have an easy path to move into a predictable scenario, whereas a multi-column approach moves the users’ attention onto other features. Therefore, there’s a great risk of being distracted from the core purpose of a page. Lead people with plain content and a smooth experience, and, at the end, a visible call to action.

Features of your own design style such as color, depth, and contrast may be deployed as a reliable tool to build communication with a user. With basic elements of specific design, users may be able to follow the fundamental language of navigating in any interface: what can I do, how can I do it? This needs a specific road map containing styles of clickable actions (links, buttons), selected elements (chosen items), and views of plain text. Each style should be easy to differentiate from the other in order to be applied consistently across an interface. This rule, if applied properly, keeps users happy and eager to interact further.

Looking for more Conversion tips? Check out our article: How to optimize your ecommerce page for better conversion.

UI web app

Tip three: Uniting similar functions (merging!)

With every design, it’s easy to repeatedly create similar sections, elements and features which all have the same purpose. It’s the same force for the whole universe: entropy – the disorder and chaos of matter – increases with the volume of information. Uniting similar functions instead of fragmenting the UI will clear out some design complications: remove duplicated functions labelled in various ways, so it doesn’t clutter the content. In a few words, the more UI fragmentation there is, the higher the learning curve is for your users to catch up with. To prevent UI refactoring, the key competence is to merge similar functions together.

Repeating your call to action is a completely different case. Repeating the CTA is a strategy that is more applicable to longer (or wider) content. It can be also repeated across numerous pages. Naturally, users will be frustrated with one item persistently displayed a few times on one view. The wise choice in all the noise is to have one soft actionable element at the top, and second prominent one at the bottom. This is because users reaching the bottom of page seem to pause and consider their next step. So, that division has a great potential to repeat a solid offer or close a deal.

Tip four: Expose the options (have a clear view)

The revolution of pull down menus hides a set of actions which are the proper goal of every page or app. It also introduces the unnecessary effort of searching and discovering functions. All those actions are supposed to be centralized, almost like an app’s ‘spine’, so the scenario of user’s path keeps all the goals in the right order. Clarity and space for content is needed to bring attention to the right places. Possible actions should be visible upfront in an obvious way. On the other hand, the options that don’t need prediction or don’t require learning (as in sets of date and time references), can be placed in menus.

Maintaining the focus on goals is a demanding task for designers. It’s much easier to drown the user with links. It’s easy to create a page with lots of links going left and right in the hope of meeting as many customer needs as possible. If, however, the designer is a true artist, he or she is capable of creating a page with a wide content volume built towards a specific call to action at the bottom. Caution is required at every step, because any link above the primary CTA increases the danger of taking the users’ attention away from established purposes. Users then simply veer into directions they weren’t primarily intended to follow. The mission of lowering the number of distractions like the number of links on a page, and possibly toning down the discovery style pages (a bit heavier on the links) can be achieved with tunnel style pages (with fewer links and higher conversions).
 

Tip five: Showing state and benefit (give the users the tips and feedback they need!)

A nice way of building an understanding between users and designers is an UI with different states of displayed elements (read or unread emails, sent or packed orders). The customer feels secure with the knowledge of an item’s condition. The message about its state must provide the kind of feedback which is expected. It also brings satisfaction for users, as they can establish if their actions were successfully carried out, or if it’s time for the next step.

And here we have another piece of truth: buttons which reinforce a benefit might lead to higher conversions. Users simply know what they want. The designer is supposed to know the action from which the user benefits and put it right on the CTA. It’s all about looking at the ‘transaction’ from the right perspective. The benefit can also be placed next to the CTA, as a reminder why they are about to take that action.

Tip five: Showing state and benefit (give the users the tips and feedback they need!)

Tip six: Gradual engagement

To build interest and gradual engagement, some subtlety is required. Instead of a pushy signup form, there must be some ease of use. The expectation that clients sign up immediately may scare them off. A page or app can be an opportunity to show them the product’s capabilities or a chance for them to perform a task through which something of value is demonstrated. It can build excitement and curiosity alongside initializing interactions.

These actions lead to a personalization of experiences. At the end, the user interacts with your product and sees its internal values. Gradual engagement is really a way of building an understanding of the product or service without conscious acknowledgment. It is a great way to postpone the signup process and prolong the user’s attention through using and customizing the application.

Tip six: Gradual engagement

Tip seven: Recognition to recall

This principle of design is grounded in psychology. Psychologists suggest that when people have a choice, it’s easier for them to identify with something already known and immediately recognizable. To make an experience easier, recognition should rely on hints which help us consider our past experience. Recall requires us to probe the depths of memory all on our own, alternatively, it requires some guidance. This is similar to multiple choice questions on exams – they can be faster to complete than open-ended ones. The challenge with recognition is to give users recognizable items which they have been exposed to before, instead of expecting them to have an idea of their own.

Tip seven: Recognition to recall
Looking for more tips for UX and good UI design – read about UX Desing Trends to watch in 2018!

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Design Software

[Infographic] Why a Product Owner is Better Than a CTO

[Infographic] Why a Product Owner is Better Than a CTO

We’ve written a longer article on why having a CTO is greatly overrated when it comes to both current and new product development. Startups simply need a PO much more. We’d like to show you the main arguments on a handy infographic.

New product development with a PO

A Product Owner is an indispensable part of Agile processes. It is his or her responsibility to consider which activities will produce the most business value. In short, a PO provides direction: and functions as the link between the team and the CEO and investors. The CTO usually determines the how, however, the results may not always be stellar.

At Espeo, we’ve completed a number of projects with companies with no CTO. We’re actually still working on some, helping them scale up. I’d recommend a look at examples. And as always, your thoughts and comments are welcome!
Infographic. Why a product owner is better than a CTO?