Attention to detail: LinkedIn Learning
After moving to Europe, I realised that now all vacancies, useful networking contacts and marketing communities would have to be sought through LinkedIn.
In Russia, this social network was blocked until 5 years ago and was not popular - because of this, everything was very new in the beginning. But after a week, I had already got the hang of it, filled out my account, joined the profile communities and started to find various useful contacts.
That would have been fine, but gradually I came across a built-in learning platform with professional courses - LinkedIn Learning. The home page is comparable in structure to Netflix, it's really easy to use. There is no Russian language, but with basic English and subtitles you can listen to various interesting, but sometimes superficial courses about anything (and at the end get a certificate and add to your profile). It's a good thing to try!
I opened the first marketing course I came across: the presenter was explaining the general principles of internet marketing in a nice, detailed way. I stayed to watch, at the same time noting the platform's bugs in terms of the design of the educational interface. Outlook.
The basic view of the course looks like this: a video player in the centre, with topics and specific videos on the left, and information about the videos at the bottom.
I have no any complaints about the player or the course navigation: everything is built conveniently and comfortably, nothing is superfluous. I have some complaints about the information block.
We went down a little lower and the video with buttons and subtitles folded up to the top, black block appeared. Why can't we just minimize the video into a small floating window on the page getting rid of course and subject titles, likes and bookmarks buttons? You won't need them in this format, don't worry!
OK, if you don't want to make a floating video window, you can replace this dark space with subtitles and some of the player's buttons – take there something useful!
Continue through the Overview section: you'll see the Related to this Course section.
Press each of the two Show All buttons and see that one unit of hidden content is displayed in the windows that open.
Unnecessary pop-ups are evil. If there is one study group available for a given course, why not show it immediately in the interface without unnecessary pop-ups?
OK, scroll below and you see a big description of the course, undivided into paragraphs. In a marketing course, not splitting information into paragraphs is ridiculous.
Wanted to see the certificate: a window opened with non-clickable content. Why?
OK, scroll below and you see a big description of the course, undivided into paragraphs. In a marketing course, not splitting information into paragraphs is ridiculous.
Going below: there's a mention of the instructor's name again and some useless statistics about the students. I'll say nothing about the fact that they were too lazy to add skill tags, one tag doesn't look very good.
But they added a lot of similar courses at the end! Yes, that's great and cool, but you could have made them into a grid of two courses in one line.
Let's go to the other sections. Nothing interesting happens in the Q&A, just acknowledgements and questions that are never answered by the author himself.
More interesting is Notebook - the implication is that here I can write down my thoughts and mark up important material.
OK, but where are these notes saved afterwards? How do I get back to them? There are no answers to these questions in the interface.
The last one: the Transcript block. The most convenient concept in the course, because people don't always have the opportunity to watch a video - it's easier to read everything.
There's no paragraph divisions either (I'm not surprised anymore), but there is a trick: you can click on a sentence or phrase in the text and a link with the timecode in the video will appear.
There is a suspicion that you could have done without the hassle. Why not just divide the text into blocks and put 3-4 timecodes with meaningful sections in the video. The videos are 2-3 minutes long, that would be enough.
All of the above problems will not directly affect the user experience. Most people won't even notice anything I've written about. However, large, undivided text is hard to read. An uncomfortable, incomprehensible and unattractive interface is not something you want to return to.
A lot of money is surely spent on content creation by content managers, teachers, operators. But minor interface issues reduce the potential for effective content distribution; it negatively affects the user experience.