Overview
For the 2024 Kleiner Perkins Design Fellowship application, I chose to redesign the user home page to make the user dashboard and customization components permanently accessible by building on Codecademy’s existing customization feature (3-step quiz) to empower users to continuously tailor their own learning experiences.
Project Type
User Experience Design, User Interface Design, Interaction Design
Timeline
December 2023 - January 2024
Tools
Figma
Prompt
“Redesign a feature from any of the companies in the Kleiner Perkins portfolio. You are free to focus on any disciplinary area that you are strongest with: Visual Design, Interaction Design, User Experience, and/or User Interface Design.”
What is Codecademy?
Competitive Analysis
Comparing the unique value proposition, learning experience, and features of Codecademy versus Scrimba (direct) and Coursera (indirect), I found that between the existing players in the code-learning platform space...
Each platform provides a basic means for users to design their own learning experience based on limited inputs that lack personalization.
Customer review analysis
After gathering and synthesizing real customer reviews from Trust Pilot, I found that...
Codecademy provides an inconclusive learning experience that fails to align with the learning styles and existing skills of their more experienced user segment.
While Codecademy offers intermediate/advanced courses, Software Sams find it tedious to sift through long lists of courses, attempt various lessons to try out their difficulties, and abandon the course if they face too much repetition. As a result, they leave the platform for competitors.
In terms of customizing their learning experience, Codecademy’s simple course quiz fails to fully capture the learning needs of their users that come from a diverse set of backgrounds.
For newer users, a dashboard would appear with recommended courses and pathways.
However, this dashboard was using a confusing accordion signifier that did not clearly indicate to the user that it needed to be expanded. If the user were to “x” out, the dashboard would disappear and be difficult to relocate. After some time, it disappears completely.
The Opportunity
Solution Exploration
I brainstormed solutions that varied in the complexity of design, impact on the existing information architecture, and feasibility of implementation, and prioritized them using an impact-effort matrix.
Key decision
Early iterations
High fidelity
Testing and KPIs
Key metrics to measure while testing the first iteration with new and returning Codecademy users.
Future considerations
Moving forward, I’d love to continue building on the personalization aspect of the user learning experience!
