Bird in Flight

Coding Stories
Innovative eLearning Platform for Engineers

Role: Design Team Lead, UX Researcher
Design Team: 2 designers (UX+Visual)
Release Date: September 2019

About Product

Writing or improving code requires many small steps that might seem like second nature to few, but to others, the logic is not always clear. When creating a class or function, introduce a variable, extract a method or add a unit test, every step has some reason and motivation.

Coding Stories are resposi-stories — step-by-step guides where every action is a story page with a clear explanation documented as text and the actual code changes illustrated through visualizations.

This a tool for people who want to learn (Readers) and people who eager to share their expertise through something different than usual mentorship (Authors). Moreover, this platform is suitable for not only technical knowledge transfer but basically for any experience that could be described by a similar algorithm (Example: copywriting, etc.)

 

Challenge

The main product goal was to face an external market after being just a part of an internal tool for developers.

Also, significant concerns were around its usability. Basically there was no tool itself, rather separated methods with different touchpoints that provide an educational experience.

Discovery & Research

I've run a series of activities with the management team, so we can outline current problems and see what gains we can add to the product so it will be more valuable for the end-user.

While we were creating Value Proposition Canvas based on our assumptions, I was interviewing users regarding their current experience. As mentioned before there were 2 types: Readers and Authors, so key research questions were about:

 

Based on VPC and interview results we got 2 problems to be addressed in general:

  • No information about the platform. Most of the audience didn’t even know that Coding Stories is a separate independent tool as they perceive it as s part of another solution (educational platform, engineering mandatory course)

  • Not convenient to use. Some tech issues didn’t allow a user to read stories outside EPAM offices and the application itself wasn’t mobile-friendly.

There were even more problems related specifically to Authors, as their commitment was much more complicated and basically more important for further growth of the product. So we decide to focus on that.

Ideation

Overall, Reader's flow was pretty simple to map and cover with features that should solve all the problems and engage the user.

 

On the other hand, we have complex Author's flow which has many more gaps in current and needs more attention to all details.

 

Using findings from research and How Might We method we came up with lots of solutions, which were mostly offline, like marketing campaigns and in-house procedures to spread the acknowledgment around the product and its possibilities and to attract more potential Authors.

Solution

To present Coding Stories as an independent separate product for users we collected all the sources in one place, accessible for everyone from everywhere. We created a landing page, which helps to increase visibility on the market and address value for both types of existing and future users. Wrapping up the result of a discovery phase gave us the main benefits that we could communicate and set a tone of voice for the audience in general.

Along with it, we’ve introduced a couple more handy features.

Catalog

All stories with clear categorization and relevant filters help to drill down into content to find exactly what you need.

 

Author’s guide and plugin

We didn’t change anything in the logic of writing the stories either gave clear instructions with a useful plugin that decrease time spend on writing a particular story. Building a community of professionals around this tool will also help people to find inspiration for new stories as well as find any tips and tricks for clarifying current questions.

 

Design system

Setting up a design system helps to develop the product further and simplify implementation for engineers.