Ian Roberts / Portfolio 2023

FUTURELEARN APP VISION

NOVEMBER 2021

Create a vision for a native app to deliver a standout learning experience that complements FutureLearn’s established web presence and contributes to the overall business strategy of generating revenue in a subscription model.

01 / Summary 

What was delivered and how?

Team

• Design Lead

• PM

• Researcher

• Tech Lead

What I did

• Research planning

• Workshop facilitation

• Interview & focus group facilitation

• Research synthesis

• Wireframing

• Prototyping

• Mobile app design

• Roadshow presentations

Deliverables

• Problem defining workshop

• A fully-detailed journey map

• Wireframes

• User-interface designs

• High-fidelity prototype

• Video explainers

Impact

We produced a 12-18 month vision for the app, including a roadmap and MVP launch strategy that was well-received by the Senior Leadership team and given the green light to proceed. Several months later as the FutureLearn business began a transformation project the app vision was used as an example of how the entire FL platform and offering could change.

02 / Understanding the problem

FutureLearn has an established responsive web app having served around 18 million learners since its startup days in 2012. The foremost questions I had at this starting point were:

• Why does FutureLearn need an app?

• What value would it bring to its users and the business that it doesn’t already have?

• Why now?

From talking to teams internally there was a lot of evidence pointing towards requests from users for an app:

• It was frequently mentioned in requests to the Community team

• It featured repeatedly in NPS surveys 

• “FutureLearn app” is a frequently used search term

• We even found fake FL apps in app stores with thousands of downloads.

• All FL’s competitors have native apps leading to expectations from learners that we at least match up to those experiences

Why now? Through talking to senior stakeholders there were several business reasons that pointed towards the need for an app.

The leaky bucket - FutureLearn was successfully able to attract new users to its platform and sign them up to free courses. Engagement and retention however was low (the average learner would complete only 1.3 courses) and conversion to paid products was severely under performing.

Apps were seen as a way to increase frequency of use through having lower barriers to engagement than the web and allowing continuation of learning on the go. We know that increased frequency of use leads to better learning outcomes and retention of customers. As FL moves from a largely freemium business model to monthly subscription, the possibility of building a new channel through app stores and use of in-app payments was seen as a way for the app to directly contribute to incrementally improving revenue.

03 / Research  

Working with a researcher we put together a 3-stage research plan:

1. Gather and review - Gather existing knowledge from appropriate sources. Review these to identify key themes which can be explored further

2. Update and validate - Update existing knowledge to make sure that it is still relevant for 2021. Validate findings at scale to ensure that they represent our learners accurately

3. Define and discover - define knowledge gaps and how they can be filled. Discover new insights into the problems that can help fill these gaps

The research itself consisted of a survey sent out to 10,000 learners and a series of 1-1 interviews with current learners.

The research revealed some interesting findings. Here are a few highlights:

We were able to see the different roles played by smartphones and desktop for learning. This was particularly evident between what we called the Global North audience (developed economies) and the Global South (developing economies). In the Global North the smartphone tended to play a complementary role, so learners would float between devices depending on where they were or what they were doing, but in the Global South a learner’s phone tended to be their primary device through which they would conduct all of the learning.

We also learned about the learner segments who would be most interested in an app. These were:

• Global South learners

• Professional learners

• 18-34 year olds

• Those who studied >10 courses in the last quarter

We uncovered the primary reasons learners would use a smartphone for learning:

1. The ability to learn anywhere.

2. Convenience.

3. Ease of access.

4. Being unable to access a computer (either temporarily or permanently).

5. The ability to quickly do things (e.g. check updates, discover courses).

And learners preferences for particular smartphone features:

Must have

• Transcripts, adjustable video speeds, commenting, course discovery

Should have

• Progress indication, to-do list, picture-in-picture, downloads, low data/offline mode, screen rotation, variable font sizing, achievements area, wishlist, highlighting and bookmarking

Could have

• Widget, study reminders, sharing, help centre

Won’t have

• Push notifications, purchasing and subscription management, audio only content, live chat

04/ Proposition testing - what direction should a FL app take?

Following this initial research phase I then created a set of five distinctly different app propositions to test internal thinking around a range of ideas.

The propositions ranged from simply replicating FutureLearns website (web replacement), to purpose-built courses exclusively using short video content (app exclusive) and a purely social experience without the traditional learning element.

Internal workshops were run with key teams to refine the propositions. Each team was invited to give feedback from their unique point of view. An immediate blocker to some of these propositions centred around content. The vast majority of our course catalogue is made exclusively by external partners and changing this content to fit the app models would contravene IP agreements and require a lot of time and effort to adapt. With this in mind and based on other feedback I narrowed down and refined the propositions to these:

• Learn with others - a proposition that looks to enhance the social experience.

• Make learning fun and engaging - a proposition that looks to introduce a gamification experience.

• Find what you love to learn - a proposition that looks to enhance the discovery experience.

Next, these refined propositions were put in front of 4 learner focus groups for further testing. 2 groups with current FL learners (UK based) and 2 groups with non-FL learners (UK based)

Reaction to the propositions was positive and discussion around each proposition generated a lot of ideas around what should or shouldn’t be included in the app.

05/ Bringing the vision to life

Following the research phase I worked closely with the PM to synthesise the focus group findings and start to bring the app direction to life. The main problem that we had identified was around engagement in the learning experience and almost everything seemed to hang of this. Learners have poor outcomes because they aren’t completing courses and FL is a leaky bucket that can’t retain customers.

We hypothesised that if we can increase the frequency of visits and the quality of the learning experience, learners will progress, complete, achieve better learning outcomes, find something else to learn and be willing to pay for it. 

We articulated this with a vision statement:

As a learner I can study from any device, wherever I choose and at a pace that suits me. I’m guided and supported to achieve my goals with the tools I need to learn, connecting me with like-minded people and illustrating progress and achievement along the way, at an affordable price

We then moved on to identifying themes to be showcased in the vision. These included:

• Learners have commitment problems and struggle with establishing learning routines and sticking to them 

• Learners struggle with motivation to learn and sometimes simply remembering to learn

• We don’t give learners the tools they expect for online learning - note taking, bookmarking and highlighting in particular

• The notion of progress and the way it is conveyed is generally confusing or inadequate

• We don’t make learning easy - there’s no easy way to review, revisit, reflect, extract key takeaways

• In today’s world our social offering is simplistic

• Social on a large scale presents problems. The more people there are interacting, the less interactive it is overall. 

• Quizzes and assessments are neither rigorous nor really engaging

I then spent 3 weeks creating a high-fidelity prototype (in Figma) illustrating 5 key flows within the app. I also made narrated videos of each flow to enable these ideas to be shared more widely.

06/ Roadshow

The final stage of this work was to socialise our ideas throughout the business, gather feedback and refine our ideas. We did this a number of ways. Firstly we played back our ideas to the internal business teams that we had engaged with earlier. We presented our work in a company-wide demo time and we also had 1-1 sessions with senior leadership team and key stakeholders.

07/ Outcomes

Following the roadshows we were then able to move into a planning phase. Our vision had intentionally omitted adding a discovery experience in the app and this was challenged by stakeholders. We countered by questioning whether we wanted to get people enrolled on even more courses that they won't complete or have the app team work on retention and engagement of our existing users? All our research had placed discovery as the least appealing of our app propositions, and previous research had identified discovery on the website as a problem for only 15% of users. We proposed that we first prove that we can increase engagement and retention in the app and then ‘open the floodgates’ through an enhanced discovery experience. We managed to gain consensus on this approach and then detailed an MVP to be released 6-months later.

As of now (April 2022), we are close to finishing the build of the MVP and are preparing to launch the app soon.