Inkling is a corporate learning platform. Content creators build unique interactive content in a drag-and-drop authoring platform, then publish it out to employees who log in to train on or reference company documentation.

Final Design

Users initiate search from the Library dashboard

Users can sort search results by relevance, document last updated or viewed

Users can filter search results by a few different characteristics

Before & After

Process Overview

I applied design thinking to move from problem to solution. This double diamond overviews the different practices I applied at different points in the creative process.

User Personas

User personas included employees who work at a desk, who are purely on a phone or tablet device, or switch between these scenarios. Some use case examples by industry include:

• Pharmacists 💊 who use Inkling to follow step-by-step instructions
• Insurance agents 🚘 who use Inkling to look up policies which change by state
• Customer support agents 📞 use Inkling to read scripted dialogue over the phone

Research

I conducted user research to learn more about user needs and expose deeper layers of the problem. I synthesized data from 16 survey responses, 33 pieces of direct customer feedback, and 8 in-depth user interviews.

By analyzing these data points I learned:

• There were 7 core areas affecting how users found their content. This included things like UI design, but also included the search algorithm and the lack of controls they had over manipulating results.
• The majority of users (62%) found search difficult to use.
• The primary use case for search was to recover known information. Rarely did users search to explore and discover new information.

Wireframes/Concepts

These are some divergent concepts I explored. With the product manager and lead engineer we decided which ideas were worth testing with users.

Design Iterations

With each piece of feedback I iterated on the design. I showed work in design critiques with fellow designers, and received feedback from the product manager and lead engineer.

User Testing

I prototyped a new design and tested it with users. I obtained qualitative and quantitative data about the new proposed features. Through testing I learned that:

• Investing in image and video search tools were a waste of time/money—users don't need them.
• Users struggled to find the filtering button/drop down. They couldn't comprehend Inklings "collection" feature—they were confused about the platform's organizational units in general.
• Sorting was helpful—plus, users got document metadata they didn't have before.
• Updated UI for the search result cards tested very well—users could skim results easier.

Outcomes

I created design specs and handed them off to the engineering team for delivery. The engineering team was on a 6-month delay and I was unable to measure business outcomes for this project—if I could I would've measured:

• Comparative SUS over time, especially release stages (Alpha, Beta, GA)
• Another survey to see if % of users who struggled decreases
• Collecting sentiment of direct customer feedback and comparing it to old feedback

I anticipated the future of search and what would be next. One big deficit of the platform was the ability for content authors to curate documents into groups (known as "collections" in Inkling). I had put together some wireframes and mocked up what editing collections would look like. Now that collections would surface to end-users as filters—this would mean giving users direct control of them would have a huge impact on search user experience.