OVERVIEW

What is Unity Learn?

Unity Learn is the official learning platform for the Unity game engine. They offer free, long-term courses called Pathways that have projects and tutorials, while also allowing users to track their progress and attend live-learning sessions led by industry specialists. The value proposition of their platform was to help users develop employable Unity skills while understanding Unity’s capabilities.

Unity Learn defined their primary goal to be improving long-term engagement and lessen pain points from their platform. From surveys and feedback forms, they were aware of their platform’s short retention rate.

What'd we do?

During this project, our team conducted user research and testing to come up with data-led recommendations. Due to our time restraint, we prioritized spending more time on testing and basic mockups rather than spreading ourselves thin to create last minute prototypes.

Target audience

From our client’s existing data, we found 3 potential target audiences:

senior students/early career professionals with basic knowledge of Unity
intermediate users looking to develop a specific and specialized understanding of Unity
young professionals looking to leverage unity to build a career.

To narrow down our scope, we decided to work with the senior students/early career professionals for our study.

OUR APPROACH

Based on our client’s goals, our team created a 3-week long study comprised of user testing, analysis, and recommendations to Unity.

Study goals

Site navigation

The existing CTA for user engagement is to navigate and engage in a Pathway. We wanted to understand how users viewed the existing site navigation and their habits.

Self-learning process

Since Unity Learn aims to help with professional development, we wanted to explore how users evaluated their development and how they interacted with the platform’s progress tracking features.

Ease of use

Since Pathways caters to novice and returning users of Unity, we dove deep into their respective needs and habits during different parts of their learning journey.

Next steps

With our study goals in mind, we created an initial study proposal. Prior to working with interviewees, we ran through a pilot study with a colleague. We found the initial study took a lot of time which would likely contribute to fatigue and disinterest from the participants. We removed some tasks and questions (like our post-test Likert Scale questionnaire), which provided quantitative information less relevant to our study goals.

Study composition

Each interview was completed in three parts, with one participant and two researchers over an hour-long Zoom video call. After refining our study, this is what it comprised of.

Pre-test

We discussed and recorded the participant's Unity experience level, how they use Unity, and other background questions to understand how they could affect results.

Think-aloud usability test

Participants were asked to think-aloud while completing tasks on various Unity Learn webpages, including onboarding and Pathways modules.

Post-test

We asked participants to evaluate their overall experience on the site navigation and learning experience through a series of questions.

Limitations

Due to the limited length of our study period, the long-term effects of using Unity Learn was difficult to study. Participants were also unable to complete more than 1-2 courses during our hour-long session times. Thus, we narrowed the scope to focus more on alleviating pain points.

ANALySIS

Sorting our data

We analyzed our findings with an affinity diagram created in Miro, which detailed the answers or experiences each participant had on the website into sticky notes.

Based on this data, we organized the affinity diagram into two main categories: platform features (content, information, offerings) and interface design (site navigation, content organization).

With the significant data collected, they were further split into subcategories:

features
language
excessive/missing information
site navigation
and more

OUR RESULTS

The overarching topics participants discussed about Unity Learn was related to the content, and interface.

Content

Features

Participants provided positive feedback on the Pathways programs. They found the content hierarchy easy to digest.

They also liked being able to track their personal development progress, and the gamification of earning XP (experience points) for completing lessons.

Language & content

Unity-specific language made navigation difficult for novice users. Essential terms to the platform about gamified features, expertise level, and other industry jargon were confusing. This was shown when participants were confused by the complex terms in the search filters when browsing through courses, as well as when trying to understand the XP system.

There was also media content throughout the site that was mismatched to the content it was paired with.

Interface design

Site navigation

Users were confused about the difference between the homepage and My Learning pages since they had overlapping content and features.

For some pages, there were mismatched expectations when users interacted with buttons and menus. For example, some buttons looked like dropdowns for additional information, but would instead lead to a generic webpage on finding new tutorials.

Content organization

Participants found the homepage’s hierarchy for information blocks were organized in an unnatural way. User-catered recommendations were mixed with non-catered sections; for example, featured banners about the latest courses would be placed alongside ones’ personal learning progress.

On the browse page, users found that they were unable to remove or reset their search filters.

Finally, in the live learning section, there was a common consensus from participants that the live course offerings had confusing visual design and hierarchy. It was hard to differentiate whether they were different lessons within a series of lectures, or multiple sessions for the same lesson.

DESIGN SOLUTION

Our recommendations

Approachable language and support

Unity Learn's content utilizes industry and platform-specific lingo, which can be daunting to newer users. They can be provided with additional help through easier language and/or contextual support.

The use of pop-ups, tooltips, and reminder descriptions throughout the platform can allows users to gain a better understanding of the language used, and feel more inclined to stay on the platform.

Changes to the homepage

With the confusion in overlapping or similarly styled features between the personal homepage and My Learning pages, we proposed a reorganization of information architecture on the two pages.

In our new site architecture, we recommend keeping announcements and less catered offerings strictly on the homepage. We also suggested minimal personal progress statistics, and instead have a large CTA to visit the learning dashboard.

Adjusting the My Learning page

The My Learning page should be changed to focus solely on progress and understanding the users have developed, and include tooltips to help users understand different parts of the progress tracker.

Adjusted search filters

We also suggested rearranging the order of the search filters on the browse page based on perceived importance by participants. A ‘clear all filters’ buttons should also be added for an intuitive interface.

Visual hierarchy for live learning

Our last recommendation was to create more visual hierarchy on the Live Learning page to separate sessions, and series-based courses by separating them into their respective topics.

REFLECTION

We faced many obstacles:

changed clients 3 weeks into the project
struggled to find suitable candidates for interviews
worked against a time crunch due to an upcoming revamp to the website set to released after our case study

However, working with the Unity Learn team was a great experience. The team behind developing and maintaining Unity Learn was incredibly supportive throughout our entire project, and took our study outcomes and data into consideration during recent iterations of their platform.

Design solutions for Unity Learn