CLIENT
MY ROLE
PROJECT DURATION
Project Overview
CD2 Learning is a dynamic learning management system (LMS) provider dedicated to enhancing corporate training in areas such as continuous large scale employee onboarding, employee career development, and advanced leadership training. The platform empowers organizations to deliver engaging, on-demand education through a highly scalable and configurable solutions.
In an industry dominated by larger, well-established organizations, CD2 found that it's smaller size allowed the company to offer unmatched agility, specialized expertise, and highly tailored solutions. This unique advantage enabled them to build deep, personalized relationships with clients and deliver custom-fit learning solutions that addressed specific training and leadership development needs. As a result, CD2 Learning had the opportunity to partner with a variety of notable brands, such as eBay, Garmin, Chick-fil-A, Six Flags, and Pella Windows, providing highly impactful solutions, uniquely aligned with each organization’s goals.
The Challenge
This project originated as a strategic initiative led by CD2 Learning’s sales team, who identified a unique opportunity to offer clients a mobile solution in an area where many competitors were struggling—corporate training via mobile apps. Many of our clients, especially those with mobile workforces, lacked their own dedicated app. This gap in the market presented an opportunity for us to create an app that could be easily reskinned and resold to clients as their own custom-branded solution.
Since CD2 Learning’s platform was already fully responsive, the challenge became designing additional, exclusive features that would differentiate the app and add significant value. The goal was to provide functionality that would make the app an essential tool for clients, helping seal the deal by offering a unique, branded mobile experience that could be tailored to their specific needs.
My Role
As Senior UX Designer at CD2 Learning, I led the design efforts for this project, drawing on my seven years of experience with the company. My goal was to create a competitive mobile app offering that stood apart from our traditional products. I focused on delivering an intuitive and visually appealing user experience that was both functional and engaging. By understanding client needs and industry trends, I aimed to design a solution that was not just a tool, but a valuable asset, ensuring the app stood out in the market and was the easy sales win the sales team believed it could be.
Project Definition
Defining Business Objectives
For this project, my goal was to align the solution with both the company’s needs and the sales team’s priorities. I brought key business leaders, together with the sales team, to gain a comprehensive understanding of the project’s potential and ensure our final solution was an easy sell. Through group discussions and a few additional one-on-one meetings, I gathered insights into what would make the app overall successful, focusing on client needs and what would be the sales strategy. This helped us prioritize features that we believe would differentiate the product and ensure it was both strategically sound and commercially viable.
Key Take Aways:
Sales believed client branded apps would be a very easy upsell opportunity for us.
Our competitors where struggling in this area. Apps, at that time, were expensive to build.
The app needed to be able to be skinned easily so it was seamless experience for the client.
We needed some unique features to set the app apart from the regular platform offering.
Micro-learning was a hot trend in the market, we should get ahead with app-in authoring.
Socialize learning or collaborative learning was also a buzz at the time in the LMS space.
Sales wanted to come up with sellable features that we could name and get branding behind.
Investigate ways learners could share their unique training opportunities with other learners.
Look into ways users could share learning experiences and outcomes from conferences.
User Research & Analysis
User Interviews
Having worked as a UX designer at CD2 Learning for over six years, I was already well-acquainted with the user base and how they interacted with our LMS platform. My intimate knowledge of our clients' needs, as well as the behaviors of both end-users and admins, gave me a strong foundation for this project. However, to ensure the mobile app would meet the distinct needs of each client, I took a more structured approach to research.
I met with many of our key clients to understand how they envisioned using the mobile app within their organizations. Through these discussions, I gathered insights into their specific training needs, mobile access requirements, and how they wanted the app to support their workforce. This client-focused research helped refine the app’s features, ensuring it was tailored to their unique goals and aligned with their business needs.
Competitive Analysis
The LMS industry was saturated with companies both large and small, all touting every new buzzword and over-promising on features just to keep pace with each other. I wanted to go beyond the fluffy marketing language and understand which companies were truly delivering on their promises and what were the unique offerings. I conducted a thorough analysis of our closest competitors, focusing on their mobile app features, customization options, and overall user experience. What I found confirmed the sales team's perspective: this was a clear, untapped opportunity. Many competitors lacked the level of customization and practical features that CD2 Learning could offer, highlighting the potential for our solution to stand out in the market. The effort identity many features we could bring the app as well as the platform.
Initial Designs and Ideation
Wireframing Workflows
Creating process maps allowed us to collaborate in clarifying future workflows and identifying key touchpoints early in the project. This visual approach facilitated discussions with stakeholders, helping us secure early approval and alignment on project goals. By encouraging input from team members during this ideation phase, we can easily realign our design vision to meet user needs and ensure successful outcomes.
Interactive Prototypes
After completing the research and ideation phases, I transitioned into creating high-fidelity prototypes to better visualize and test the concepts. These interactive prototypes provided a realistic, tangible representation of the final product, allowing us to gather more meaningful feedback from users and stakeholders. By simulating the full user experience, I was able to test key interactions, UI components, and design elements in a more dynamic and realistic way, ensuring that the concepts resonated with all of the designated user types.
App Homepage
The homepage is designed to give users immediate access to what matters most. Upon login, users can quickly pick up where they left off with their training, making it easy to continue without interruption. Key areas of the app, such as ongoing courses, upcoming training modules, and progress tracking, are clearly visible and accessible with just a tap. This streamlined design ensures that users spend less time searching and more time learning.
Micro Based Learning
The courses section allows users to easily pick up where they left off, with clear indicators showing their progress and the section they last completed. By streamlining navigation, users can quickly jump back into their training with minimal effort. I was mindful to keep color limited to only a few key colors choices so that could easily be reskinned for other clients.
Moment-In-Time
The "Moment in Time" feature empowers learners to capture and share unique learning experiences as they happen. Whether it's a key insight from a conference, an inspiring takeaway from a webinar, or a breakthrough moment during a training session, users can easily capture and share these discoveries with the broader learning community. This fosters greater collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and peer-to-peer learning, enhancing the overall training experience for all users.
Team Collaborations
The Collaborations section enables users to engage in meaningful discussions within their learning groups or the classes they are enrolled in. It allows learners to contribute insights, ask questions, and offer feedback that enhances the learning experience for everyone. By fostering a space for peer-to-peer interaction, this feature encourages knowledge-sharing and supports a more dynamic, collaborative training environment. Users can stay connected, learn from each other’s experiences, and actively contribute to the growth of the company.
Content Library Hub
The Content Library acts as a centralized hub where users can easily access all their learning materials, including documents, images, videos, as well as the lessons created in Lesson Builder or Moment in Time. It provides basic usage information for each file or their groupings and allows users to easily manage their allotted file space. With the ability to organize and control their content, users can stay on top of their materials and ensure they’re always ready for the next step in their organization's training journey.
White-Label Customization
The app’s design was built for flexibility, allowing it to be easily reskinned and resold to different clients. Users could upload logos, select color palettes, and modify UI elements to match their brand identity—or we offered this as an additional service. This white-labeling process enabled clients like eBay, Garmin, and Chick-fil-A to quickly launch a branded training app, enhancing their employee programs while ensuring a seamless, consistent brand experience across all platforms.
