BRAC E-Learning Platform

E-Learning Platform

Client:BRAC
Project Type:Web and Mobile App

The Challenge

BRAC is world’s no.1 NGO and international development organization based in Bangladesh, had given the COdesign team the project of developing an online learning platform for their whole staff of 100,000 employees from both local and global offices.

The objective of this platform, which is a web app, is to help employees of Brac to grow professionally by obtaining skills by enrolling in various lessons and courses online that will be available through this platform. The courses will have a study plan and conclude with examinations to assess the learning status, skills acquired and aptitude of the examinee.

The platform will be organized into various roles such as admins, leaders, instructors and students and will be allotted to the relevant Brac representative and given access accordingly. The user profile will contain a central dashboard from which employees will be able to access every part of their profile including their progress report, courses are taken, suggestions and other relevant statistics.

Existing Problems

The reasoning behind developing this platform is due to the various time and schedule limitations such as follows:

Lack of opportunities for employees to garner new skills or improve existing skills due to time constraints and lack of alignment with the company’s values and vision.
Time constraints in getting instructors to conduct courses/classes physically on a regular basis.
Difficulties in conducting these courses at all Brac offices.
Employees losing touch with their past skills and lack of motivation in obtaining new skills.

Audience Definition

The audience for Brac’s e-learning platform is straight-forward and limited to Brac whole internal employees. This includes Global Team, Managers, HR’s, Team Leaders, Instructors and General Employees.

My courses and course lesson page

Course lesson, My Courses and My profile page

Role & Scope of Project

I was the Lead UX Designer on this project to design the overall experience closely from the user research stage to launch. My role involved designing the overall user experience of the platform which began with in-depth user research until the launch stage of the project. My team and I were dedicated to making the user experience as simple and seamless as possible so that the adapting time for the user could be minimized as much as possible.

During the research stage, we organized a focus group discussion in addition to detailed surveys that we had conducted to better understand the perspective of Brac employees. We made user personas according to the various roles that are to be assigned on the platform, be it the admin, instructor or general employee. We wanted to create a very easy-going, conveniently accessible platform for Brac employees that would promote learning and entice them to take up more skills eventually without too much hassle. From day one, our mindset was “simplicity is the key.”

The Information Architecture followed the user research. During this phase, my role was to ensure that all the data is updated into the website and optimized. This is how the information was set-up and organized for users to use.

A total of 4 months was required between the research stage and the usability test to carry forward the final design for Front End development.

Design Process

Result & Solutions

The final stage of the development of the e-learning platform was the onboarding process. This involved briefing the management and team leaders of Brac so that they could easily begin the training process for the employees.
This learning platform can be accessed by the 100,000 employees of Brac via their computers or phones from wherever they are. Through this comprehensive project, we have given the power to Brac employees to update themselves with various new organizational skills and attain further professional and personal growth.

I believe any website we develop is not just an online presence, it’s an experience. The user experience is vital to the success of any website, and a positive user experience usually reduces the bounce rate and brings users back. Given that this platform is for learning, we want users to get familiarized with it and want to keep coming back. Studies show that 74% of people are likely to return to a website if it is optimized for mobile. In this day and age, mobile optimization is highly important, which is why our websites, just like Brac’s e-learning platform, are responsive over all platforms.