The Significance Of Person Expertise In LMSs
The overlooked importance of user experience in LMS
When it comes to purchasing a Learning Management System (LMS), the integrations it supports and the reporting functions it contains (mobility, pricing, compatibility and scalability) are often the most important decisive parameters. While these are indeed important parameters, the user experience (UX) of a platform is often overlooked. When you look at an LMS from an end-user perspective, the features don’t come as a surprise. All the end users would notice is the UX of a platform. In fact, the UX of the platform determines whether or not learners actually want to use your LMS.
This article goes into depth about UX, why it’s important to invest in an LMS with good UX, and how to look out for it when shopping. Before we get into all of this, let’s first take a look at user experience (UX).
What is User Experience (UX)?
According to Wikipedia, User Experience (UX) is defined as the way in which a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service. In short, user experience is a broader term that encompasses all end-user interactions with a particular product. Some of the key parameters that determine a platform’s UX are design, accessibility, responsiveness, and ease of use. The same applies to learning management systems (LMS). Specifically, the design of dashboards, easy navigation, accessibility functions, responsive design, content placement, scalability and flexibility are some of the main parameters that determine the UX of an LMS.
What does it mean to have a good user experience in LMS?
Ultimately, the benefits of having an LMS with a good user experience boil down to the fact that learners interacted better with your LMS, improved user engagement, and improved the ROI of training. But what does a good UX mean for an LMS? According to our UX designers, a good user experience does not just depend on having the right features, it depends heavily on whether or not those features are designed to be intuitive so that end users don’t have to get used to them.
It all starts with the UX team studying how a learner interacts with an LMS and determining what they expect from an LMS. Based on the results of this research, a prototype design will be built and that prototype will be rigorously tested to understand the areas for improvement. This is the design methodology we have chosen to create a simple, intuitive, and feature-rich LMS that is also easier to adopt. Our ultimate goal was to develop a platform that even technically inexperienced people could easily use for learning. Just like the search engine Google!
What makes a good UX on an LMS?
In a word, a good LMS UX is one that makes an LMS easy to use. For a better understanding, we can analyze the UX of an LMS based on 4 factors:
- user friendliness
- Intuitive design
- Uniform layout
- Accessibility
Let’s take a look at these individual features in detail:
1. Ease of use
When we talk about ease of use, we don’t just have a good user interface (UI) or a visually appealing design. Instead, it is also about how easy it is for end users to understand the functionalities of an LMS, how good its content management functionality is, the customer support, the interoperability, the ease of integration with third-party applications, the scope of customization, automation and more.
Yes, it’s true that with all of these features and functionality, learning management systems can get a little complex. The idea is to have an LMS that doesn’t have a kinky design that makes it difficult for users to navigate through or use the various features.
2. Intuitive design
While intuitiveness is often used interchangeably with ease of use, they are two different things. Intuition in designing an LMS focuses on making the product easy to understand and use – rather in such a way that an end user can learn to access the platform with minimal instruction.
This is especially important in the case of an LMS, where learners can come from different age groups or with different technical skills. You can’t expect a learner to invest their time actually learning how to use your LMS. You will also not be able to spend time and resources training your learners to use the platform.
The homepage of the search engine Google is an excellent example of intuitive design. Even an 80-year-old with minimal technical knowledge will find it easy to search Google thanks to the intuitive design. So yes, intuitive design plays a vital role in the user experience. In addition to making learners interact better with an LMS, an intuitive design would also encourage an inclusive eLearning environment.
3. Uniform layout
If you think of design as a strand of DNA, consistency would be a molecule in it. Consistency is paramount when designing an LMS. Having your LMS consistent in design can make it easier for learners to focus on learning rather than understanding how the LMS’s user interface and functionality work.
By consistency, we don’t just mean using similar layouts for pages or using a similar color pattern across the platform. Instead, the design of your LMS should also be visually and functionally consistent. For example, if you have a button that takes you straight back to the homepage, you need to keep the button the same on all pages of your LMS. Color, size and even functionality have to be consistent. The consistency of the layout increases the predictability of the platform, which in turn increases learner engagement.
4. Accessibility
Contrary to popular belief, accessibility isn’t about the ease with which a platform can be used. Instead, accessibility is about making a platform (in this case, LMS) accessible to all users, regardless of whether they are specifically enabled. Reading aids for visually impaired learners, ADHD-friendly features, screen reader features for the blind, and color adjustments are some of the accessibility features an LMS should have, for example. Accessibility features not only add to the user experience, but also help create an inclusive learning environment.
To sum up
The main reason for investing in an LMS is to train and educate your employees, which in turn gives your company a positive ROI. But know that if your learners aren’t actively engaged in your LMS, this won’t work. Trust us when we say the UX of your LMS can make a huge difference in your learning and development programs beyond what you can imagine.
BrainCert Enterprise LMS
BrainCert is a cloud-based all-in-one training platform that is integrated with 4 core platforms in a uniform solution – course platform, online test platform, virtual HTML5 classroom and content management system.
