Enhancing Polls Experience in Live Classes at Unacademy: a Product Design Case Study

Dive into this case study for a fun journey of how I jazzed up the much-loved ‘Polls’ feature from Unacademy’s live classes, turning it into a lively playground for both Learners and Educators. Let’s roll! 🎉

Unacademy has been the leader in the Indian EdTech space for quite a long time, mainly for its comprehensive and user-centric design. The platform bridges the gap between conventional and digital education with a suite of products catering to Educators and Learners.

The polls feature was introduced in 2020 and has always been an integral part of live classes. Think of it like “Kaun Banega Crorepati” (or “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” for the non-Indian audience) in a classroom. The teacher is the host, and the students are competing with each other. But sadly, no flashy cheque to show off here!

Yet, it needed to align with high-end design standards and showed potential for boosting Learner participation while providing Educators with valuable insights.

Before you have the same reaction as Jeremy Clarkson, let’s begin!

This case study is a pretty long one, so grab your popcorn, and get ready for the ride 🎢

🌟 At a Glance

Enhancing polls to make it more engaging and insightful for Educators, while improving its prominence, adding delight factor, and delayed gratification for Learners.

💭 Context

Functionality of Polls

Poll has a versatile function in live classes. Here are some ways Educators use them:

Quizzing Learners: Some Educators use polls to quiz their students on the topic being taught. It’s an instant way to gauge comprehension and reinforce learning.
Gathering Feedback: Polls also serve as a means for Educators to understand the sentiment of the class. For instance, they might use a poll to determine when the majority of students would prefer the next test to be scheduled.

Why Redesign Polls?

Some reasons why we picked this project:

Educators and Learners deemed it outdated as the ROI was pretty low for both parties due to a lack of updates since 2020
This caused usage to drop: from 83% to 61% for Educators and 75% to 47% for Learners

♟️ Platforms

Educators: Browser 🌐
Learners: Mobile App 📱

The experience that each of these groups go through is very different. Hence, I will be splitting the case study accordingly.

Educators are the showrunners of Unacademy. We ensured that we maintained the highest quality while onboarding them. This meant we had to give them the right tools to help them achieve their goals.

To kick things off, let’s set some context about the existing design.

📜 The Old Flow

Check out how the old version worked for the Educators:

🚧 The Problem

A pressing concern was the decreased use of Polls by Educators.

Through intensive research, shadowing sessions, and direct feedback, we gathered insights. Here’s what they had to tell us:

Imagine you’re a teacher in a classroom who has just collected the answer sheets from all the students after a surprise test. There are certain things you do when you look at the papers.

🔝 You look for the highest scorer

🙅🏻‍♂️ You evaluate students who answered incorrectly and plan a performance enhancement strategy

⏳ You notice students who couldn’t complete on time and hear their concerns out

This was the same experience we aimed for. And this is where the HMWs come into play.

🧐 How Might We

𝟷. How might we support Educators with more actionable insights and results in polls?

Let me explain by giving some examples:

Spotting low performers to give them more attention
Acknowledging the top rankers to applaud them

And so on.

𝟸. How might we reduce distraction and give more prominence to polls, so that the next steps are easier to think about?

Great! Having identified our challenges, let’s go section by section to understand the whole process.

🔮 Creating a Poll

We did not touch this part because we realized there was nothing to fix. Here is what it looks like while creating a poll.

🏗️ Poll in Progress

Once the Educator has created the poll, they are shown the interface for tracking responders and the cumulative result of chosen options.

🏆 Poll Leaderboard

When the poll ends, the Educator may choose to share the leaderboard with the Learners with the overall stats.

We did not find any problems with the existing design for the poll leaderboard; it worked as it was intended. Hence the decision to keep the same design was made.

That wraps up the designs for Educators!

🔖 Results from Testing

A lab-rador experimenting with chemicals (microscope for aesthetic effect)

𝟷. Enhanced Clarity and Decision Making

Educators appreciated the redesigned graphs and participants list which provided a clear and comprehensive view of poll results and gave them deeper insights into the class performance. This feedback successfully resonated with our first problem:

HMW 01: How might we bring in more actionable insights and results into polls for Educators?

𝟸. Accessibility and Ease of Use

Educators expressed that the redesigned interface was accessible and easy to navigate with the least amount of distraction, making the poll management process smoother even for those who are not tech-savvy. Thus, we achieved our second How Might We as well:

HMW 02: How might we reduce distraction and give more prominence to polls, so that the next steps are easier to think about?

All in all, the Educators expressed their excitement for this much-awaited redesign of the feature that is so crucial to their classes.

We expected an increase of at least 30% in usage.

You’re now set to host an episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati. You see all these new features added on the screen in front of you, hence you’re able to complete your tasks faster.

But where’s the consistency if the participants do not get to witness the reactions to the actions from all the new features on your side?

So, let’s switch seats and look at the updates on the Learner side!

As of 2022, Unacademy had 50 million active Learners. That is 3 million more than the population of Spain! Imagine having a user base that’s more than the population of a country that once hosted the FIFA World Cup.

Anyway, back to the topic. The Learners are always greeted with a memorable experience and a state-of-the-art user interface, be it in any part of our app.

Hence, the bar was set high for this one.

To understand the circumstances better, here’s some context about the older designs.