Redesigning a learning management system to increase adoption of the lesson summary feature.
Fluent City is an online language learning startup specializing in the conversational teaching method using personalized lesson plans.
Fluent City’s Learning management software (LMS) was designed to streamline teachers' workflows by enabling them to log and send lesson summaries, establishing a central repository for lesson content. The ultimate goal was to develop an automated lesson plan generator powered by the content curated from this feature.
The challenge
Limited feature adoption and 33% churn rate: By August 2020, Fluent City faced a plateau in new user acquisition and increased churn rate. Customer feedback revealed that students felt the business fell short in fulfilling the promise to offer hyper-relevant and personalized lesson plans and content.
To increase retention, the team formulated this question: How might we increase usage of the lesson summary feature?
Pain point 1
Students cancelled and/or showed little language acquisition
Teachers' workaround
Consistent outreach: 8 out of 15 teachers sent lesson summaries with homework or extra resource, mainly to encourage self-study and keep students engaged
Pain point 2
Teachers found it hard to track students' progress manually
Teachers' workaround
Documentation: 9 out of 15 teachers track progress by documenting lesson plans and notes on each student
Pain point 3
Teachers found the platform confusing and difficult to use
Teachers' workaround
Opt out: 15 out of 15 teachers sent lesson details through email and avoided using the lesson details feature in the platform
Rapid ideation technique to generate possible solutions: With tight deadlines, we conducted a rapid online brainstorm to generate quick, actionable solutions. From this, we prioritized several low-to-mid effort changes that would have a high impact:
Key features such as the ones listed below were chosen as high priority due to their low-to-mid effort and the high impact it would create.
Support attachments: Allow teachers to send attachments to students for homework assignments
Actionability: Conditional CTA on lesson cards with incomplete lesson summary fields
Improved information architecture: Reconfigure internal system so information is organized by student, not lesson
Discoverability: Direct access to the lesson summary page from the online calendar
3
1
When teachers first log in to the platform, they are presented with a list of completed lessons. Conditional “Add lesson summary” button appears if system detects that the lesson summary section (image 4) for corresponding lesson date and time is incomplete.
2
Similar to 1, conditional button appears on calendar lesson modal if the teacher does not have a completed lesson summary section for the corresponding lesson date and time.
3
4
Research revealed that teachers organize information by student, not by lesson. Accordingly, we reorganized the information architecture so that detail for a particular student is consolidated and displayed on one page.
5
To make it easier for teachers to track student progress, lesson history, including what was covered in class, is accessible from the student information section.
Although timeline constraints prevented us from running usability tests, we closely monitored key success metrics post-launch:
Usage of the Lesson Summary Feature:
Pre-redesign: 1%. Before the redesign, only 1% of teachers used the feature.
Post-launch: 17%. Our goal was to reach 10% in two weeks, and we surpassed that—17% of teachers adopted the feature.
Satisfaction Rate: 85% of teachers reported that the new design was easier to use, exceeding our target of 80%.
Set up regular check-ins with the team: We underestimated the complexity of the file attachment feature, which led to delays. Clearer communication would have helped manage scope more effectively.
Design consistency: The platform lacked a design system, leading to inconsistent user experiences. Fluent City needs a unified design library to streamline workflows and improve usability.
Real-world constraints: We had to prioritize deadlines over a complete design process, skipping usability tests. This taught me that flexibility is essential in fast-paced projects, and sometimes relying on institutional knowledge can be a valid trade-off for speed.