Adobe Systems: Reinventing Learn
Challenge: Can we reimagine how users learn to use Creative Cloud products from an instructional design standpoint, developing a flexible system for surfacing that content to the right audience at the right time across multiple channels?
Learning can be a vivid experience - a technicolor brick road that leads to discovery and inspiration. That’s the kind of experience we wanted to create when we set about to redesign the Learning platform. Our goal was to make learning about a new product, feature, or workflow empowering as well as engaging.
Adobe speaks to creatives – and to do so effectively, Learn needed to be inspirational as well as educational. With that roadmap, we set about creating new and exciting content types, established a new visual language, and created a platform for cross-channel distribution of Learning content.
UX and instructional design
Up until this time, most training available on the site was video-based. For this project, we looked at all the different ways people learn. Some did well following a video. Others appreciated an illustrated, step-by-step approach. All in all, we came up with five core learning types and matched those with the content we were creating.
The project was unique in that we needed to address both the instructional design of the tutorials themselves, as well as how the functionality, features, and architectures flowed into the different consumption channels (web, mobile, in-app help, companion iPad app).
A new start
The road to a new Learn platform began with a pilot project, called Getting Started. These step-by-step experiences engaged users who came to the Learning site with no prior working knowledge of the product. We launched and tested eight of these experiences, gaining insights, and using the feedback to help us refine the instructional direction of Learn.
We used experience mapping to highlight fundamental interactions and touchpoints across the different learning types and templates. We conducted both qualitative (usability labs, field studies, moderated interviews, card sorts) and quantitative (email surveys, A/B tests, pattern analysis) research on live tutorials as part of our process, with usability tests conducted during the development lifecycle.
We concentrated on transforming the essentials to create a high-impact, streamlined experience; and introduced new navigational and search constructs to aid in discovery, as well as the idea of “poster image” overlays to the videos as a means of creating visual continuity. The relaunch ushered in a new, friendly, and approachable voice and tone for Learning content, with a rich visual language and interactive features that helped transform Learning experiences from passive to engaging.
The new system launched with over 800 pieces of new content, surfaced in multiple areas, from the web to in-app. The audience multiplied to over a million tutorial views per day.
Project engagement: 2013-2014.
This project had the unique challenge of needing the content to flow seamlessly into several types of conduits. In addition to the standard desktop, tablet and mobile views, the layouts also needed to be viable in in-app help and as welcome screen content when a new user opened the application.
