During my time at Apptegy, I was tasked with designing a modular file system for the LMS within Thrillshare. This allowed for newly remote teachers during the Covid-19 pandemic to more easily structure their online class materials.
Rooms is a component to Thrillshare created by a company called Apptegy. Similar to Blackboard or Canvas, it features a component allowing instructors to store documents. My task was to create a more modular approach for file storage that fit the needs of instructors for classroom materials.
I began by assessing the feedback received from our current user base. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, users using the Thrillshare LMS were underwhelmed by the features that we provided for online classes. Knowing this, I began rapidly researching with stakeholders and the design team to deliver a solution to solve this problem. This led to:
After gathering the research, we were able to move towards the ideation phase and started wireframing solutions. A few of the feedback snippets are shown below:
As a the lead designer on this part of the product, I took the lead working on the user flow and wireframes. This involved several iterations with designers, product managers, and directors to ensure that user needs were being addressed. One of the first user flows I presented is shown here:
This is a snippet of a user flow I created. This gave the team a visual to show the direction of my wireframes. It also allowed me to have a point of reference for where a particular screen fit into the overall flow.
Driven by the user flow, I began to design wireframes to turn the ideas into visuals. By focusing on the primary content, I was able to create a modular structure flow that would allow teachers to easily organize their content. Folders and files were each given a section, and a preview to the right allowed teachers to preview content without having to dig through multiple layers of folders.
Once the user flow and wireframes were approved, I moved into creating hi-fidelity mockups using the design system to bring all the ideas into a final interation. Due to development constraints, I removed the file preview, but I kept the File/Folder structure in place to encourage a better sense of organization. To further accomodate different user types and needs, we also came up with the idea of adding a view toggle to show in-line or visual representations of the files and folders.
For individual file views, I brought back the file details panel to the right where the user could rename the file. You could also see who contributed to the file, file size, and date information. Lastly, I kept the CTA buttons together to maintain a similar hierarchy, and it bundled all the commonly used actions together as shown below:
If a user opted in to moving a file, I provided a display for what files and/or folders they selected to move. Below this summary, I displayed a file system showing where they currently existed in the hierarchy, and the user could then select what destination they wished to move the content to:
One complaint we often received from customers was the lack of verification when deleting files and folders. With this in mind, I incorporated modals with danger colors to inform the user what type of action they were about to take. I added in the bonus of displaying the file or folder name to ensure they knew the consequences and could revert if needed:
This project took roughly six months to create the final hi-fidelity solutions. Overall, it was received positively by teachers, and it is still being used to this day in the product. The only thing I wish I had spent more time on was gathering more usability feedback once the product was launched. If you're interested in seeing the final result, it can be found here as part of the Thrillshare Rooms package:
Thanks for reading this far! Here are similar projects that might interest you:
