An accessible, navigable lesson template for a collaborative, global educational community

Intro

The Carpentries is the leading inclusive community teaching data and coding skills. The lesson template they used for all of their lessons (across their suite of communities) was in need of a refresh to better serve their diverse group of community members.

The Problem

✷ The template didn't serve the different needs of its users, especially learners and instructors
✷ The template didn't conform to web accessibility standards
✷ The template was not responsive and didn't perform across device types, limiting the ways in whcich both learners and instructors could use it

The Team

Designer (that's me!), 1 dev parter, multiple stakeholders

The Results

It's hard to get results post-contract, but here's what I'm interested in seeing:
✷ Adoption percentages
✷ Anecdotal feedback from the Carpentries' community
✷ (Designs performed very well in all testing, 3 different rounds)

The Solution

Navigability! I introduced a navigable sidebar and a loading indicator to give both instructors and learners the ability to understand their progress and jump around as need be.

Sidebar on both tablet + mobile screens

The Solution

I also added both a learner and an instructor view to accommodate their different needs

Learners don't have any superfluous information but instead have access to key points, learner profiles and the glossary of terms to help them succeed.

Instructors can now easily access notes, export slides (specific sections or all at once), extract images and export a lesson outline.

The Solution

I made sure to optimize the lesson template for accessibility and readability

The sometimes dense content is now readable thanks to an update to a Google font and optimized spacing. Additionally, all colors meet AAA contrast standards for web.

The Solution