// Background

After leading design on Instructure’s flagship product, Canvas, I moved to another group to work on a product that universities could use to sell online self paced courses. This Catalog product would be sold to universities as a solution for continuing education students, and work in conjunction with Canvas.

// Problem

Universities have hundreds of self paced courses they host in Canvas. Most of these courses are skills based and not necessarily listed in their school programs making enrollment and visibility to these course difficult. Administrators of these programs were using more grass roots marketing messages and university websites to try and expose these course to their student body and the public, with a very low success rate.

// Process

• University Administration and Professor Research

  • Contextual inquiry at various universities 

  • Competitive research on tools universities were already using

• Online Course Research

  • Online student and professor interviews

  • Interviews with course designers

• Value Prop Ideation

  • Wireframes, Figma mockups, prototypes

  • Feedback meetings with admins and professors 

• Prototyping & Testing

  • Sketch and Illustrator mockups

  • Weekly iterative In-person, in-office user testing

// Solution

Working with the teams Product Manager, we created a new, online platform where universities could create visual catalog entries where students could shop, buy, and learn directly from the site. 

Catalog had three core functions:

• Shopping views where students could search, filter, and preview courses

• Buying views where students could create a new account or link their current Canvas account, pay for the course and instantly begin learning

• Course builder and listing views for admins to create informative profiles for each course

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