The Challenge

Discover how we co-created a better workflow and learner experience for this charity to engage and upskill their volunteers in under 3 months.

With a small team supporting over 2000+ volunteers in Scotland alone and an 800+ annual volunteer turnover, having both an engaging learning experience as well as efficient supporting processes were essential to success. There was a strong preference for face to face training and the move towards a more blended experience, specifically the more digital aspects of the programme weren’t very welcome.

The Vision

We wanted to make the team’s lives easier and the learners’ experience more engaging. 

We started with exploring the challenge from both a process and solution perspective. We ran focus groups to unpick and understand where the real pain points were and the changes that would drive the biggest impact from a business, team and end user perspective.
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After initial discovery we decided to

1. Increase scalability

2. Redesign the experience

3. Boost adoption and engagement
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Increase scalability

With the volunteer pool growing, high turnover and small team in mind, we needed to ensure the processes did more of the heavy lifting and were more scalable.
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Better onboarding and troubleshooting

To do this we set up user guides, self help pages and better onboarding via interactive pop-up walkthroughs. We also set up a help desk with template replies for the most commonly asked questions and links to the relevant guides.
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Easier management and admin

We automated the LMS registration process, which saved 30 minutes per registration, totalling over 500+ hours saved in the first year alone.

Individual branches needed to be able to evaluate and track progress and the charity needed to be able to analyse effectiveness of learning interventions to inform future improvements, and report on broad trends across the service.

To do this we set up dynamic audience groups and designed bespoke interactive reports to make it intuitive and easier to assess the impact of projects across various dimensions.

We also geared our redesign to optimise the use of the LMS functionality to maximise its impact on efficiency for the most common admin tasks.
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Redesign the Experience

We took the insights from our initial discovery to inform how we can reduce friction and make the platform more intuitive and usable. We wanted volunteers to find the platform inviting and engaging.

Key changes included using more of the LMS’ functionality, redesigning the UI to be more intuitive, creating a more personalised and cohesive learner journey and simplifying the site architecture.
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After the redesign

67% found the LMS meets their needs very or extremely well
65% found the LMS extremely or very visually appealing
65% found the redesign encouraged them to further explore the LMS
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Designing a more intuitive experience

Key changes

— Removed the need for course enrolment (unless in specific instances) to encourage continuous learning 

— Introduced categories, filters and a search function to make specific content easier to find

— Reduced clutter and content on pages and opted for a simpler design and site architecture to reduce cognitive load

— Embedded better feedback mechanisms at various touch points for learners to share their insights
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Creating a more personalised journey

Key changes

— Designed customisable personalised home dashboards

— Set up context sensitive content to show important information only when needed

— Highlighted the most relevant courses for each learner based on role and seniority
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Boost Adoption and Engagement

The last piece was to design a campaign to market the shiny new experience to the volunteers. 

We co-designed a communication strategy with clear and targeted campaigns and messaging to increase adoption and engagement with the LMS and encouraged early feedback to inform future iterations.