Prioritize and implement feature

Published in

UX Collective

4 min readNov 3, 2019

In this post, I would like to share with you a practice case for an E-Learning platform, and how was the process of the implementation of new features.

Start with good research, as it will define the success of the product. Keep researching during the whole process. Never assume or prejudge and remember, “Design for your user, not for you”.

With this in mind… let’s get started!.

1. Research

After conducting some interviews and received the results from the survey, it was found:

Laptop: 75% chose a laptop as their preferred device when taking an online course.
Flexibility: 53.8% of the people who answered the survey gave flexibility as their most valued feature when taking an online course.
Feedback: 34.6% would like to receive feedback for the course to encourage them to stay on track.
Deadline: 32.5% would like to have a deadline for the course to encourage them to stay on track.

With these results in mind, we asked ourselves the question “How might we find a way to help our users to stay focused and finish their courses?”.

2. MoSCoW Method

Brainstorming, brainstorming, brainstorming… we need to focus!. We chose to use the MoSCoW method.

The MoSCoW method is a prioritization technique used to reach a common understanding with stakeholders and decide which features to add to a website or app.

Here the results of a big session of brainstorming and the features that we decided to aim for.

3. Interactions & Documentations

Testing, feedback, remake, testing, feedback, remake… Completed one usability test after the other.

Usability testing is a technique used to evaluate a product by testing it on users.

The feedback received from the usability test was crucial to understand our users and create a better experience.

Here some visual effects of the testing and remaking process.

The landing page shows a very small lettering on what the lessons include (a small challenge), and the users were not paying attention to it. Therefore, opted out to a clearer landing page with defined steps on how it works.

The original Q&A Board page contained the time passed since the question was made and it did not offer a search bar. In addition to this, the chat option phrasing was re-written.

One major point of the feedback received, the count down was causing stress to our users, this is why we replaced with “Start”. In addition, the navigation buttons were considered irrelevant, therefore changed.

Our users informed us, the word “Submit” was confusing, as they did not upload their work yet. Therefore, it was changed to “Upload Your Work”.

4. What did we learn so far?

Even though the feedback and retesting turned out to be overwhelming, we had to stay focused.

5. Next Steps

Based once more on the MoSCoW method results, we decided our next steps to be:

Bookmark: Offering the users the possibility to mark and save parts of the video in their list.
Live Sessions: Offering the users the possibility to participate in live classes.
Reminder: Offering the users the possibility to receive notifications on their progress and deadlines.
Calendar: Offering the users the possibility to add the lessons and deadlines in their calendar.

6. Prototype

A prototype is an early model of a product built to test a concept.

Ours looks like this.

Summary

The process of how to prioritize and implement a feature is a lot of work and it can be very confusing. We found out that the most important of all is to keep our trust in the process, to our colleagues, our users and keep going.