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 an easy win for the sales team.
Project Definition
Defining Business Objectives
I believe every successful project begins with clear 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 together key business leaders, including sales, 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 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 look into having 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 unique their training opportunities with other learners.
Are there some ways we could share learning experiences and outcomes from conferences.
User Research & Analysis
User Interviews
In this critical phase, I concentrated on throughly understanding IGS Energy’s existing processes and workflows, particularly how teams interacted with service contractors. By meeting with team members across various departments, I gained valuable insights into operational challenges and the overall workflow. This exploration helped identify key pain points and areas for improvement, laying the groundwork for the subsequent user interviews. Understanding these dynamics was essential in ensuring that the new solution would be relevant, scalable and effective in addressing the needs of everyone in the organization.
Competitive Analysis
To ensure our design solutions would met the needs of IGS Energy’s diverse user base, I began by conducting an in-depth analysis of the main user types. I identified several key roles, including Clients Admins, Operations, Call Center Representatives, and the main users, the Field Technicians. Each user type brought unique perspectives and requirements.
Initial Designs and Ideation
Creating Process Maps to Secure Early Approval
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.
Streamlining Ideation with an Advanced Design System
The product design team at IGS worked closely to develop a robust, advanced design system that played a pivotal role in shaping our design process. Leveraging the MUI component library, we collaboratively built a well-structured framework that enhanced design consistency, scalability, and significantly reduced time-to-delivery across all projects. The system also introduced key efficiencies in development, helping to minimize the accumulation of technical debt.
With this comprehensive design system in place, we were able to ideate more rapidly, eliminating the need to invest valuable time in building traditional wireframes. By leveraging our pre-defined components, including navigation, sidebars, and other essential elements, we could prioritize areas needing ideation while remaining flexible in our mid-fidelity approach.
As concepts were approved, this approach brought us much closer to final deliverables for development, eliminating the need to start high-fidelity design from scratch after wire-framing. This not only saved significant time but was a key factor in our ability to deliver ahead of schedule, exceeding expectations from both management and stakeholders.
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.
Login/HP
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Courses
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Moment-In-Time
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Collaborations
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Library
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Branding
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Dev Handoffs & User Testing
Dev Handoffs
The development team was spun up for this project prior to me starting the position so I had to hit the ground running from the start. Luckily that sort of situation was not my first rodeo and I was able to find low hanging fruit to get them started and keep them well fed with work the entire project. I attended their morning stand ups and sprint reviews as well as led weekly design review meetings so we had continuous communication which insured design and the development were always on page.
Usability Testing
As pages were getting completed we were continously conducted usability testing with both internal users and field contractors. These testing sessions provided critical insights into the user experience, highlighting pain points in navigation, content clarity, and overall usability. Based on this feedback, we made targeted adjustments to refine the product and improve the interface. These iterative refinements, driven by continuous collaboration and user feedback, resulted in a product that was very tailored to the specific needs of the contractors who would rely on it in the field.
Key Takeaways
The Solar Asset Management App To improve alignment and ensure the design vision was maintained, we implemented "Design Review Meetings" before each sprint was completed and pull requests were made. These meetings provided an opportunity for me to review the work in progress and offer immediate feedback. By addressing potential issues early, we were able to fine-tune the details that often get overlooked, ultimately ensuring the final product closely matched the design intent.
This proactive approach not only streamlined the development process but also helped prevent small, recurring issues from slipping through the cracks, ensuring a more seamless transition from design to development.
