Client Work
14 Weeks
Spring 2022
Figma
Miro
UX Research
UI Design
Visual Design
Chantal Huang
David Mai
Helen Nguyen
Tiffany Ren
Unity Learn is the official learning platform for the Unity game engine. They offer a variety of free, long-term courses called Pathways that have projects and tutorials, while also allowing users to track their own progress and attend live-learning sessions led by industry specialists. The value proposition of their platform was to help users develop employable Unity skills while understanding Unity’s capabilities.Unity Learn defined their primary goal to be improving long-term engagement. From surveys and feedback forms, they were aware of their platform’s short retention rate.
During this project, our team conducted user research and testing to come up with data-led recommendations. Due to our time restraint, we prioritized spending more time on testing and basic mockups rather than spreading ourselves thin to create last minute prototypes.
From our client’s existing data, we found 3 potential target audiences:
To narrow down our scope, we decided to work with the senior students/early career professionals for our study.
Based on our client’s goals, our team created a 3-week long study comprised of user testing, analysis, and recommendations to Unity.
The existing CTA for user engagement is to navigate and engage in a Pathway. We wanted to understand how users viewed the existing site navigation and their habits.
Since Unity Learn aims to help with professional development, we wanted to explore how users evaluated their development and how they interacted with the platform’s progress tracking features.
Since Pathways caters to novice and returning users of Unity, we dove deep into their respective needs and habits during different parts of their learning journey.
With our study goals in mind, we created an initial study proposal. Prior to working with interviewees, we ran through a pilot study with a colleague. We found the initial study took a lot of time which would likely contribute to fatigue and disinterest from the participants. We removed some tasks and questions (like our post-test Likert Scale questionnaire), which provided quantitative information less relevant to our study goals.
We discussed and recorded the participant's Unity experience level, how they use Unity, and other background questions to understand how they could affect results.
Participants were asked to think-aloud while completing tasks on various Unity Learn webpages, including onboarding and Pathways modules.
We asked participants to evaluate their overall experience on the site navigation and learning experience through a series of questions.
Due to the limited length of our study period, the long-term effects of using Unity Learn was difficult to study. Participants were also unable to complete more than 1-2 courses during our hour-long session times. Thus, we narrowed the scope to focus more on alleviating pain points.
We analyzed our findings with an affinity diagram created in Miro, which detailed the answers or experiences each participant had on the website into sticky notes. Based on this data, we organized the affinity diagram into two main categories: platform features (content, information, offerings) and interface design (site navigation, content organization). With the significant data collected, they were further split into subcategories like:
Participants provided positive feedback on the Pathways programs. They found the content hierarchy easy to digest.
They also liked being able to track their personal development progress, and the gamification of earning XP (experience points) for completing lessons.
Unity-specific language made navigation difficult for novice users. Essential terms to the platform about gamified features, expertise level, and other industry jargon were confusing. This was shown when participants were confused by the complex terms in the search filters when browsing through courses, as well as when trying to understand the XP system.
There was also media content throughout the site that was mismatched to the content it was paired with.
Users were confused about the difference between the homepage and My Learning pages since they had overlapping content and features.
For some pages, there were mismatched expectations when users interacted with buttons and menus. For example, some buttons looked like dropdowns for additional information, but would instead lead to a generic webpage on finding new tutorials.
Participants found the homepage’s hierarchy for information blocks were organized in an unnatural way. User-catered recommendations were mixed with non-catered sections; for example, featured banners about the latest courses would be placed alongside ones’ personal learning progress.
On the browse page, users found that they were unable to remove or reset their search filters.
Finally, in the live learning section, there was a common agreement from participants that the live course offerings has confusing visual design and hierarchy. It was hard to differentiate whether they were different lessons within a series of lectures, or multiple sessions for the same lesson.
Unity Learn's content utilizes industry and platform-specific lingo, which can be daunting to newer users. They can be provided with additional help through easier language and/or contextual support.
The use of pop-ups, tooltips, and reminder descriptions throughout the platform can allows users to gain a better understanding of the language used, and feel more inclined to stay on the platform.
With the confusion in overlapping or similarly styled features between the personal homepage and My Learning pages, we proposed a reorganization of information architecture on the two pages.
In our new site architecture, we recommend keeping announcements and less catered offerings strictly on the homepage. We also suggested minimal personal progress statistics, and instead have a large CTA to visit the learning dashboard.
The My Learning page should be changed to focus solely on progress and understanding the users have developed, and include tooltips to help users understand different parts of the progress tracker.
We also suggested rearranging the order of the search filters on the browse page based on perceived importance by participants. A ‘clear all filters’ buttons should also be added for an intuitive interface.
Our last recommendation was to create more visual hierarchy on the Live Learning page to separate sessions, and series-based courses by separating them into their respective topics.
Although we faced obstacles such as changing clients several weeks into the project, struggling to find suitable candidates, and working against a time due to an upcoming revamp to the website that was set to be released a few weeks after our case study, working with Unity was a great experience. The team behind developing and maintaining Unity Learn was incredibly supportive throughout our entire project from start to finish, and were even able to take our study outcomes into consideration during their recent iterations of their platform.
However, working with the Unity Learn team was a great experience. The team behind developing and maintaining Unity Learn was incredibly supportive throughout our entire project, and took our study outcomes and data into consideration during recent iterations of their platform.