(EN) How to encourage completion of Udemy courses with UX Design
How small, everyday victories can give us the strength we need to achieve our goals
The context
Every day we strive to be better than we were the day before, and each day brings an opportunity to learn something new. Whether it’s to improve our resume, keep up with the ever-evolving market, or simply satisfy our curiosity, Udemy is committed to being there, every day, preparing us for the challenges that lie ahead.
However, even amid the many positive reviews that thousands of students give to courses on the online teaching platform, there is a problem that affects the service’s metrics and students’ resumes: Most people do not complete the courses they purchase on Udemy and do not receive their certificate.
In the courses taught by instructor Leandro Rezende, for example, the completion rate is less than 3%.
In the 11-hour course, which costs R$19.00 (around 3.50 US dollars), students attend an average of only 40 minutes. Even so, the course receives ratings above 4/5.
In the 30-hour course, costing R$579.00 (around 106.55 US dollars), the average time of classes attended per person is 2 hours. The course also has a rating close to 5.
What makes students not complete the courses they purchase, even though they have an average satisfaction rating of 90%?
Understanding the Udemy scenario
To better understand the people who were behind the screens in search of learning, (since our focus was not on the instructors who teach on the platform), we identified 4 personas that represented the archetypes of students: The Studious, the Modern, the Applied and the Lazy.
By immersing ourselves in the daily research of users, we gathered the information that we considered most important for our objective:
Reasons for purchasing courses and staying on Udemy:
- People tend to buy courses on Udemy mainly because of the prices. The variety of courses is a factor that works in favor of choosing.
Reasons for not attending classes:
- They are discouraged because they do not have time set aside for the courses and because they do not feel their progress as they would like, they feel a lack of motivation to study.
Seeking to understand the platform’s touchpoints to know if anything could harm a student’s experience to the point of making them abandon the course, we discovered that none of the problems that the user faces harm their experience to this extent.
Once we understood that the low completion rate was not related to specific issues with the experience that Udemy currently offers, we decided that it was necessary to look for opportunities to improve the user relationship with the platform.
Exploring possibilities and defining solutions
We identified a guiding criterion based on the business problem:
- Increase the course completion rate.
And two other auxiliary criteria based on the main pain points of users:
1.1. Encourage the user to create (study) habits on the platform.
1.2. Encourage the user to interact with the teacher/other users.
We mapped the user journey to get a full view of the experience a Udemy student has during their stay on the platform, identifying points for improvement and opportunities and, using the guiding criteria, we prioritized the ideas raised:
Due to the conceptual proximity, we combined the two ideas with greater priority to work on them as a single solution. Thus, our proposed solution became:
Interaction and course completion points that generate discounts that can be multiplied through frequent study.
Designing the solution
We draw scribble frames to make the proposal tangible.
Getting to know Ucoins:
Upon entering the platform, students are introduced to a points system called Ucoins, Udemy’s new virtual currency that transforms learning into exclusive discounts to gain ever more knowledge.
Multiplying Ucoins:
Studying frequently is as important as studying a lot, and with that in mind, consecutive days multiply Ucoin earnings, guaranteeing even more discounts.
After defining the solution in detail, it was time to work on the prototype to test the solution with users.
We started with the Wireframe to understand what needed to be changed on the platform to accommodate the new solution. We tried to avoid changing the path that Udemy users are already accustomed to as much as possible.
Styleguide
The new components are produced in accordance with the current style guide at the time (2019, before Udemy’s rebranding), using the Atomic Design system to guarantee the possible scalability of the project.
High fidelity prototype
The prototype was built to carry out concept testing with real users.
Concept Validation
Using the high-fidelity prototype, we carry out tests with users to validate the concept of the proposed solution, and at the same time being aware of the importance of usability, we carry out the tests with a focus on testing the concept to guarantee the effectiveness of the results.
We separate the main quotes from two users during the next test:
Negatives:
“When people see coins, they already think it’s for buying something.”
“The homepage doesn’t have anything about the coins.”
Improvement Points
“I didn’t understand why the course only let me have a percentage discount.”
“Since there’s constant feedback about the coins, people eventually get it.”
“… I’m just not sure if I would use a coin because people might see it as directly related to the value of the course, maybe a diamond would be better.”
“I liked seeing the coins and seeing that I earned a lot at the end, but I got confused about how to spend them.”
“I thought I would have a button at the end to spend the coins.”
“I wanted to see how many coins I had earned in each course, along with my progress.”
Positives:
“I think it’s a really good idea, it has great potential to engage people…”
“I find the idea of having coins really cool. For me, it’s an incentive to complete my course because I earned a lot of coins when I finished and got really excited.”
“I thought the bonus rewards were cool.”
“Rewards work really well for me, even in life.”
Conclusion
We consider that the proposed solution would be the first step to increase the completion rate of courses on Udemy, considering mainly the reactions and citations captured by the users in the tests.
