The brief: improve on the university’s learning management system for the student-side.
There is a lot of LMS software out there—what more can be improved and iterated on? UX; that was the goal of this project. After a cyclical process of interviewing, prototyping, testing, and animating, Classical LMS is my approach to the huge problem of making education as frictionless as possible between web, mobile, and the classroom. With a brand and multi-breakpoint interface flexible and scalable enough to make learning just a little bit more accessible, Classical targets the pain points of the current solution to prioritize seamless and efficient digital interaction.
The following animation presents the bespoke Classical LMS brand—emphasizing the variability of student strengths and priorities—the customizability of the mobile and web interfaces, as well as an introduction to "Plato", the GenAI assistant designed to be there when you need him.
One important thing to consider was which features would carry over from the flagship desktop version into tablet and mobile.
Combining an in-depth competitive analysis of similar software and interviewing students to pinpoint the main frustrations yielded a clearer path forward for what to iterate on, how to structure the experience, and who I was designing for and why.
The surveys revealed that the current LMS system had confusing and sometimes inaccessible flows, clunky interactions, and redundant patterns, making everyday tasks and crucial moments frustrating (even maddening, especially in the stressful lives of college students).
Based on the surveys and research, the three primary goals for the interface became:
To have open and easy navigation to be able to get almost anywhere the student needs to go at any time;
To have a customizable experience, to be able to hide or show, rearrange, or label things as the student wishes;
And not to overwhelm the student with a needless and unnecessary quantity of information that communicates a false sense of urgency.
With the addition of marketing material like the animations to the project, I also considered the goals, motivations, and frustrations of a secondary kind of user; educational administrators, or, the "customer" of the product.
The full desktop interface:
