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Innovation Research and Design
Cengage’s Sociology division ($15 million yearly revenue) wanted me to help them to pull ahead of their main competitors by offering a new type of learning experience that would stand apart from the traditional curriculum.
Project Details
My Role
As the UX Lead I led the core team of researchers, designers, product managers and developers in a multi-day ideation workshop where we generated product ideas and brought in users to test them. The result of the project was 3 new products that were built and the suite of learning products currently available at Cengage,
Results
3 new learning products in productions in market. Sociology sales pipeline increased by 13% and product conversion increased by 18% in the first year after release
Bringing Innovation to Market
Cengage’s Sociology department found itself lagging behind its main competitors in the marketplace and wanted to shake things up by offering a new type of learning experience that would stand apart from the traditional curriculum.
The goal was to find a way to enable students to empathize and connect the foundations of Sociology with their own worlds, and to get them stimulated and engaged.
If the study of human behavior is so fascinating, then why is this class so boring?
Ideating
I planned and facilitated an ideation workshop with the goal of having 1-3 products to develop.
- 2 Days
- 2 Design teams
Members from:UX, Dev, Product Mgmt, Learning Science, Research, Sociology - 12 student participants
- Objective
Support students in developing an objective perspective (aka sociological lens) when evaluating current social issues. - Measure success by - level of engagement - degree of being self-directed - actions based on assignments
- Deliverable1-3 mobile first concepts which include key features that meet measurable objectives
Doing the research
Through ongoing research with student users a few important themes emerged: 1.) Finding relevancy in the content. Most first-year and continuing students agreed that current events and social issues should be discussed in their classes, and 2.) Connecting with peers to learn from their ideas through using social tools that encourage discussion and collaboration.
“Dear Intro to Sociology,
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I feel like you just don’t get me.
Sometimes I feel like you’re not even trying. I mean, if you weren’t a Gen Ed requirement, I wouldn’t even be here.”
Defining the problem
The team gathered for brainstorm sessions and applied techniques like affinity diagrams and empathy mapping to draw connections between our observations and ideas, to prioritize the most important features, and to develop new insights.
Testing assumptions
Several ideas emerged and paper prototypes were created.
User testing
Several rounds of iterative changes and user tests helped me refine the concept.
Connecting to the business strategy
Soon, we realized that this activity which connects the personal to the pedagogy, is applicable to other qualitative disciplines as well, and we shared our work with the Psychology and Anthropology teams who were excited to be able to offer a new learning experience for their users also.
Final design
Weave is a tool for students that combines different types of media into a seamless video essay. Weave helps students upload media, craft it into a compelling story, and tag it with keywords. For instructors, Weave offers a platform to collect the video essays, organize them through keywords, and showcase their students' best work.
Impact
In the first quarter after its release, Sociology student activations (purchases) increased by 14%. Cengage sales reps reported that It helped them win several critical large adoptions at large universities which they had been targeting for years but couldn’t land and it It narrowed the gap between Cengage and their closest competitor in the Sociology market. Currently it is one of the most popular activity types used not only by Sociology but also by Psychology and the other qualitative disciplines.
Testimonials
It offers so much more beyond the old, boring multiple choice online quiz or exam.
This is a helpful tool for getting students to examine their own biases and how they make ssumptions.
It really opens up the door for a lot of possibility, and it offers a new way of thinking about digital learning...It helps students to put themselves in the shoes of someone else and get at something that sociologists really care about, that's the Sociological Imagination.
