Design a solution for online learning.

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Design a solution for online learning.

Asked at Microsoft over a year ago

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Neel88 · Answer 1 · 2022-08-24T11:38:01+0000

Clarifying questions :

1) Is this a startup or are we building this for a big company like MS, Google or Facebook, etc? - I am assuming it to be a startup and we would be starting from scratch with V1.

2) Is this a mobile app or a web app or Both? Assumption: Both

3) Do we need to consider any particular age group here? Are we building this for kids, Adults, etc? Assumption: Should support content for all age groups

Goal: At this stage, my assumption would be first to start with user adoption and engagement since this is our first version and we would like to target new users who could use our platform. And then at later stages get into monetization piece and paid courses

User Groups: Some of the potential user groups for this solution could be

1) Content Creators - Like Educational Institutes, Instructors, Professional trainers, etc

2) Content Viewers or Learners - Are the ones who search for the content and start learning via courses, lectures, videos, etc

I would like to focus on 2) since they form the majority of our users. There are more learners than content creators.

User Journey :

1) User registers on the app and creates profiles with personal information like name, email, phone, favorite topics/topics of interest

2) User searches for the learning courses and enrolls for a course to start learning.

3) User picks up learning from his/her history to continue the course. Sometimes they would need reminders of where to continue the course from

4) User completes the learning and a certificate is issued

5) User provides reviews about the course, instructor via comments, likes

6) User shares the learning experience, Certificate, and Reviews on social media with friends

7) Users do not know when a new course on the interested topic is launched

8) Globalization - If we are launching this app globally, support for multiple languages is needed

Solutions with prioritization

Use Case	Solutions	Impact on User	Effort	Priority
1) Login and Registration	To start off with, build a login page and registration form which capture most of the user's details. The Solution should allow a user to create multiple profiles : For example: Kids and Adults so that appropriate learning suggestions can be made based on profiles. The profile should also contain favorite topics and sub-topics of interest like Development, Design, UX, Gaming, Finance, IT, Marketing, Health & Fitness etc We can also think about providing a voice-over registration process with a device for people with disability (for example handicapped) who cannot type themselves without any aid. But I would leave this out of MVP for now	High	Low	High
2)Search & suggestions	The solution should be able to provide the latest courses based on the User's profile information (Use topics and Subtopics of interest). Apart from this, the user should also be able to search on the app based on topics, instructors' name etc We can also provide suggestions based on AI/ML where the AI/ML algorithm checks for topics based on 1) User's recently completed courses and suggests similar courses 2) Hot topics/courses which are currently enrolled by most of the users with similar profiles and topics of interest	High	Med	High
3) Continue from where they left, Reminders	There should a section on the landing page where users can view their learning history like in progress, completed. And further for in-progress courses they should have a button to continue the course from where they left before. Further reminders or push notifications can be built for mobile app (and on the web a bell icon on top of the landing page) to suggest continuing a course if they are lagging behind. For example, if a user has not touched a course for a week, the reminder system kicks in and reminds users to continue the course. These notifications should be customizable from the user profile	Med	Med	Low
4) Completion & Certificate	Upon completion, of the course, the learning history needs to be updated with details like completion date, course name, etc Additionally, the users should be able to generate & download their certificates	High	Low	Med
5) Reviews	There should be a provision to like, rate, and provide comments about the course upon completion of the learning course. This can pop up as soon as the user completes a course. Further, these ratings and comments could be used by the ML/AI algorithm to suggest top rated courses to other users	High	Med	Low
6) Sharing	Users can share their Learning status on social media like linkedin, twitter etc . This would need third party integration via APIs and authentication mechanisms like SSO, Oauth etc which could be effort intensive during an MVP phase	High	High	Low
7) New launches	There should be a way in which the tool notifies the users about new courses on topics of interest. This could be a section on a home page called "New Courses" highlighted in some color	High	Med	Low
8) Globalization	The app should provide translation services or provide transcripts in local languages for people who do not understand English for example.	High	High	Low

To start off with for MVP, I would prioritize 1) 2) and 4) which contain the basic lifecycle of any app: Registration, Able to search and view a course, and able to complete the course.

Another complex scenarios involving voice over registration, Globalizations etc can be looked at later stages

Metrics of success:

1) Number of users registering on the app. I would check the graph on a Monthly basis. This would be my primary metric to start off with

2) Time spent on the App Learning (engagement) - DAU, MAU etc