Responses Tab Redesign
Refining instructor’s experience of student data
August 2024–November 2024
Design methods, research, and project management
Redesign of the “Student Responses Tab” for a major assessment platform.
An international courseware product with world-class content and robust assessment tools has a complex and useful gradebook for its instructors and students.
As the product has grown in complexity for the last decade, however, the gradebook has not kept up, and now does not fully serve all of the instructor’s use cases.
I was the lead designer for an in-depth redesign of the gradebook’s responses tab and delivered prototyped and validated high-fidelity designs.
The Problem
A student assessment platform has increased in complexity, and the gradebook can no longer meet the complex needs of the instructors.
The Work
Current gradebook UX audit
Review of past attempted redesigns
Convergent and divergent design cycles
Internal reviews and critiques
High-fidelity designs
The Solution
A redesigned “Responses Tab” with new student data “lenses” functionality, improved navigation, and a refined data dashboard.
Deliverables
Wireframes
High-fidelity screens
Figma prototypes
Users & Audience
32,000 Secondary and higher education instructors and professors
Roles & Responsibilities
Workshop Moderation
Stakeholder Management
UX Design
UI Design
Tools
Pen and paper, Figma, FigJam, Stark Contrast & Accessibility Tools
Discover
Product history review and UX audit
Review the tool’s history, including original design rationales and its evolution over time.
Previous Version 1: Legacy “Dot View”
The Responses Tab’s “Dot View” was a dashboard of student responses that instructors used to get quick info about:
How individual questions were performing
How an individual student was doing
Previous Version 2: Beta View
Due to increasing complexity, changing use cases, and evolving user behavior, a new view was introduced a few years ago in “beta” form. The new page featured:
High-level data rollups, as well as granular data by question and by student
UI that guided instructors to review questions and students that needed review
Important functionality such as resetting or regrading a question.
Audit the Responses Tab’s current functionality and study data on current usage patterns.
Even given the new and improved “beta” screen from a few years ago, about 17% of users are still navigating to the dot view. I looked at past research and ProductBoard feedback and determined:
The primary reason for using the dot view is to get a quick glance at individual student performance on individual questions.
Design
Solution ideation
Divergent ideation and design review sessions.
I completed several rounds of sketching and critique to generate different approaches for modernizing the “dot view” while accommodating new use cases. I used feedback from other designers and engineers to hone and prioritize the use cases.
Solution design
High-fidelity screens and a prototype using real student data.
Review sessions with the many different stakeholder teams (product, engineering, and customer experience) supported a high level of thoughtfulness and precision in the final user interface and navigation structure.
Validate
User Testing
Moderated and unmoderated testing sessions validated the design approach and supported final design refinements.
“Seeing on the last attempt, how successful they are and who’s struggling the most. That’s awesome. That is so cool!”
“This is a much better version than the one we currently have.”
I co-wrote the research plan, built the testing prototype, and helped synthesize the results for the user testing sessions with our team researcher. The results validated our designs and provided a few opportunities for final design refinements.
Outcomes & Impact
Deliverables
We worked closely with designers, researchers, and engineers to design an effective and delightful student response review tool.
At the end of this project, we delivered:
Detailed and focused reports on the history of the tool
Documented design process
Wireframes
High-fidelity designs
Impact
The new responses tab accommodated use cases that the old “dot view” and more recent “beta view” served while resolving many other usability pain points. The redesign pushed beyond the status quo of instructors’ expectations and provided them new ways to get the information they need to best serve their students.