What UX design tools can you use to create a seamless E-Learning experience?

I never stick to one tool, i keep exploring. In the past three years, I used Miro, Canva, Genial.y, prezi mainly, and some other tools for animations. The value isn't with the tool, but with the content displayed using that tool. We can't use boring and outdated design tools anymore. With all the technologies we got, it is worthy to explore and find new tools.

A powerful way to approach user research ahead of designing training, is to map your assumptions about the current situation and what the blockers between this and the desired situation are. Then, conduct interviews, surveys and experiments to test those assumptions. This should allow you to build accurate audience persons and clearly understand the real problem they are experiencing.

Getting to know your learners is the stepping stone in crafting an e-learning course that resonates. Think of it as cooking a meal keeping in mind everyone's preferences; you want it to be nutritious yet palatable. In my approach, utilizing personas and empathy maps helps create a course that's not only aligned with educational objectives but also attuned to the learners’ needs and aspirations. It’s not just about transferring knowledge, but doing so in a way that speaks to the students, understanding their challenges, motivations, and learning preferences to guide their journey effectively.

To create a seamless E-learning experience, UX designers often use tools like Figma, Adobe XD, and Sketch for prototyping and designing user interfaces. These tools facilitate collaboration and iteration. For example, Coursera, a prominent E-learning platform, employed Figma extensively to redesign its user interface. With Figma's collaborative features, Coursera's design team could work together in real-time, incorporating feedback from instructors and students to enhance the platform's usability. This iterative approach led to a more intuitive and engaging E-learning experience, improving user retention and satisfaction.

UX design tools like Adobe XD and Axure RP help optimize e-learning platforms, making the learning process more engaging and intuitive. Adobe XD allows designers to create interactive prototypes, while Axure RP offers dynamic panels and conditional logic. Figma is a collaborative tool for real-time collaboration, while usability testing tools like UserTesting or Hotjar gather user feedback. These tools enable designers to iterate on designs, improve usability through feedback, and ensure an intuitive and engaging learning journey for learners.

My experience is: the fancier the tool for storyboarding, the more difficult it is to get feedback as some are afraid to use it and then either don't do it or send me long emails with feedback. Knowing your stakeholders and audience can save you a lot of time.

Sketching ideas for an E-Learning course serves as an invaluable initial step in the design process. This phase allows for quick visualisation of course structure, including layout and navigational elements. It offers an immediate, tactile way to test assumptions about learner engagement and course flow. Low-fidelity prototypes created through sketching act as an early feedback mechanism, enabling rapid iterations and refinements. Tools can range from traditional paper and pencil to digital solutions like Balsamiq or Sketch. This practice ensures that both pedagogical objectives and user experience considerations are integrated from the outset, leading to a more cohesive and effective E-Learning course.

We should do some top level visualisation of ideas before detailing the content. It can be as simple as pen and pencil sketch or any digital tools available with which we are comfortable.it can be mental map kind of things like NLP based tools. There are plenty of options for tools here like white board, sketch to layout the structure and navigation of content.

Canva whiteboard is a great tool for sketching. Another great tool that is underutilized for developing storyboards is PowerPoint. You can quickly get stakeholder / SME buy-in when you have the following elements included in your storyboard 1. On-Screen Text, 2. Voiceover, 3. Interaction elements 4. A graphic or illustration of what the user will view on screen.

Testing prototypes with real users is a highly effective way to ensure you don't waste development effort on a solution that fails. Not all prototypes need to be full fidelity. Consider a paper prototype, a physical wireframe that gives the general flow for the user to test. Low-fi and high-fi prototypes can also be effective when defining how design choices impact usability and effectiveness. FIGMA is an excellent tool for both high and low-fidelity prototypes.

Outside of these great tools, you can also test in low-tech ways by providing your cleaned up prototype sketches to a tester group for review. Word documents, PowerPoints, scans, etc. Don't let a lack of access to software tools hold you back from collecting as much feedback as possible. You may think this is unnecessary, or that you only need to get feedback from one or two people, but keep in mind that we live a diverse and complex world. What you may find intuitive, or two or three people find, may not uncover gaps that groups with different perspectives see. No, you don't have to incorporate all of it, but data is an invaluable tool. So prioritize feedback whenever possible and make sure to approach a diverse audience of testers.

Taking early feedback is very critical for Knowing whether we are on right track. It can save us with more troublesome scenarios and avoid unnecessary errors. We can create quick prototype to understand the needs and collect the feedback and take forward into further process. This is very much required to effective and efficient. We can take the help of some tools available for prototype like Adobe XD or figma or some tools from open source community as well

Illustrator is probably my favorite design tool and I love spending time crafting unique visuals that are tailored to my learners, company, and industry. BUT like others, I did not always have access to robust software like those in Adobe CC. You'd be surprised by what you can build in PPT using basic shapes. In fact, most basic visuals are simply a careful grouping of shapes. Many helpful videos on the web can walk you through building your own using them. This allows you more customization and design control than out of the box icons. There are many great design tools out there but unfortunately, many are behind hefty pay walls. Most people have access to PPT or Slides, so don't be afraid to get scrappy and work with what you have!

To introduce edtech into a teaching that was previously devoid of it, it seems to me that we must start with simple and limited things. Two of the simplest ways are: 1) The preparation of slideshows with soundtrak. All it takes is for the teacher to record with a headset microphone what he/she would have said face-to-face to accompany each slide 2) Conducting small, fun self-assessment activities Initially, these tools will complement the traditional course by allowing learners to work in the absence of the teachers, then, when their number is sufficient, they can even replace them. These are achievements that a teacher can do him/herself to a large extent, without requiring the intervention of specialists in digital tools.

Visual design is an important aspects of E- learning contents. Tools here play very significant and valuable role. We can advantages of Recent developments in Generative AI and LLM model based tools for image and video creation alongside the good mix of audio and music for background. However we have traditional tools available like canva, Photoshop, illustrator among many others. Usage of tools can improve efficiency and productivity, quality and consistency.

If you are on a budget, or have a client who usually requests a lot of image changes - USE THE WATERMARK VERSION! Before wasting your hard-earned credits on images that don't fit the client's expectations or vision, download the version with a watermark. This allows them to view the images that you are planning to use with the flexibility of adjustment. It looks tacky at first, but a quick explanation shows that you are focused on developing a product that they are satisfied with.

Interaction between content and learner is major factors for engaging E- learning. Use of mix of different style of interaction game, puzzle, simulation, questions and answers can be appropriately inter weaved with out breaking flow and at same time maintaining the motivation and intest of the learner.level and depth of interaction should be adaptable according to level of learner and should be customisable.

When thinking about the UX of a course, I like to have someone test it in front of me and have them talk through their thoughts, feelings, and challenges. This helps guide my final version to meet the needs that I might not have considered.

I have been developing educational digital resources for almost 30 years, and one of the difficulties I have faced, like certainly many others, has been the change in Ed-tech, which has forced me to regularly migrate my achievements to new environments. This can be a lot of work, as we experienced with the abandonment of Adobe's Flash technology. So always think about choosing open development environments, allowing you to retrieve as many things as possible by exporting them in universally accepted formats. HTML5 is probably a good choice from this point of view.

I am struck by the insights everyone above brings to this rapidly developing, and CHANGING environment. My main experience continues to be with Figma but I look forward to its new phase with Adobe. I was pleased to see the transparency of an e-mail that flagged the adoption of AI within the App. It would be so easy for them to bury this within an impenetrable disclosure. Well done.