Content Authoring Tool- Generative Research
August 2022-September 2022
Everfi from Blackbaud
Forge is a content authoring tool, created and maintained by EVERFI’s software developers and engineers. This tool is essential to the development of each EVERFI course and is used on a daily basis to maintain the functionality of digital course experiences that are used by millions of our learners.
Forge is currently used by a small team of implementation specialists. As the company continues to grow, this tool needs to be accessed by more teams, without requiring users to have high-level technical skills to use it. Therefore, a need emerged to better understand how we might iterate the product for broader group of end users. The goal is for users to create, edit, and upload course content without utilizing coding skills. Due to the current state of the product, the main stakeholder requested research to gain clarity of the identity and needs of the target user (instructional designer, course designers, product managers etc.).
Collaborating with Stakeholders
The main stakeholders for this project was the technical product manager and the senior software engineer. At the beginning of the project, we met with the entire team to uncover the main problem with the product. We also spent time observing the main stakeholder working in the product, getting an immersive experience navigating through the content authoring tool and seeing a first hand glimpse of issues with the user interface as well as visualizing the user flow for making updates and edits.
Throughout the project, the main stakeholder had access to the research repository in Dovetail and was able to comment on the questions and insights we developed throughout the research study. This allowed the senior UX researcher, myself (UX research intern), and the stakeholders to build partnership throughout the discovery and development of this work.
Research Objectives
To better understand who the Forge user is and their needs and requirements for building a digital course experience the focus was:
Goals when building a course or web content
Needs to complete their goals
Common problems and pain points
Expectations of a course authoring tool during the process of building or editing a course
After assessing the product and stakeholders problem and research objectives, the selection of user interviews and usability testing were the best research methods for this project. In this stage of generative research, user interviews provide insights to users motivations, goals, needs, frustrations and pain points while creating and editing content in a course authoring tools.
Research Methodology
User interviews were conducted with internal colleagues who used content management systems and content authoring tools within the company.
User interviews were also remotely held with participants who used content authoring tools for a variety of reasons beyond daily job roles through TRYMYUI.
Internal - 8 participants (instructional designers, training and development team members)
External - 4 participants (people who had experience using content authoring tools in their daily job roles)
Example Questions
All questions were related to the objectives of user background, goals and needs of the content authoring tool and main paint points.
Background
What are some examples of the work you do in a typical day or week?
Can you tell us how you use a content authoring tool or CMS in your role?
Goals & Needs
Tell me about the last time you used ‘x’ tool.
What are the most important tasks you or other people need to perform in using ‘x’ tool? (share screen/show example)
Pain Points
Is there any way ‘x’ authoring tool/CMS isn't supporting your needs currently?
Please complete this sentence: "The most frustrating part of using ‘x’ authoring tool/CMS is…”
Findings
After meeting with 12 participants, evaluating insights and themes in Dovetail. Several themes emerged which also created the attributes of 2 personas. The mission minded manager uses content authoring tools to support their team of instructional designers. These managers stressed the importance of having tools that were easy to learn and update, having shared file organization throughout their teams, and utilizing built in collaboration features to revise, edit and provide feedback during course development. The primary user are course creators who emphasized the needs of editing features that were easy to use, such as click and edit, drag and drop, and interactive blocks. To make their day to day task flows more simplified they enjoyed using templates and themes with the ability to build courses quickly but they also shared the anxiety and frustration of course publication to the learning management systems.
Personas
Recommendations
After discussing the findings, gathering insights and evaluating user personas and journey, we formed the following recommendation to improve the current state of the product to meet the needs, goals and expectation of the targeted Forge user.
Opportunities
Simple, non-technical UI (no need to go into code 95% of time)
Click to edit on page preview
Drag and drop blocks/component
Course templates
Built in collaboration and review features
Integrated course authoring and publishing
Accessibility
(After finishing the research and analyzing the results, it became clear that if these modifications were implemented, organizational processes and responsibilities would need to be restructured. Additionally, it could also have an effect on procedures of course development and job descriptions. This insight made it crucial to talk about the consequences of these discoveries.)
Next Steps & Research Readout Discussion
At the close of the research presentation, we discussed:
Significantly changing Forge to serve these “new” end users (instructional/LX designers), vs. making more surface level UI changes and usability improvements for our current users
Adapting and iterating Forge and the significant ramifications for course product development:
Product strategy
Product design
LX roles and responsibilities
With these new findings and recommendations, the Forge stakeholders will continue the discussion with additional team members of EVERFI to understand the company’s vision for the continual growth of this product. The research findings is a springboard for continual discovery and redirection of this product.
Journey Map
The journey map details the experience of the primary user (Course Creator) in their end-to-end process from planning to publishing a course.
