UX/UI Is Not Ornament, It is Basis
On the earth of customized eLearning, good content material alone is not sufficient. Learners count on intuitive, partaking, and accessible platforms that help—not hinder—their studying expertise. That is the place UX/UI is available in. For Educational Designers, UX/UI designers in EdTech, and eLearning builders, mastering the Person Expertise in eLearning is not optionally available.
On this article, we’ll discover widespread pitfalls in eLearning design, break down greatest practices for crafting seamless UX/UI, and spotlight alongside the way in which real-world examples that present how these rules work in motion.
The Pitfalls Of Poor UI In eLearning
Let’s begin with the plain: an absence of visible orchestration kills motivation.
Even with the best-written content material and most tailor-made studying journey, learners’ motivation can drop once they encounter a blandly designed course. A number of variables think about to affect this blandness, so let’s delve into the widespread ones.
1. An Unbalanced Textual content-To-Graphics-To-Colours Ratio
Learners have a restricted consideration span and reminiscence at any given second. Therefore, bigger our bodies of textual content and fewer visible breaks (whether or not inventive or informative) can rapidly flip the duty of comprehension right into a wrestle to struggle boredom.
Using too many fonts, not sufficient whitespace, too many colours, or too few colours can affect the stability on display screen. The perfect apply right here is to just be sure you are attaining stability within the visible that enhances your nice content material. Creating a method information to your challenge that features primary parts corresponding to main and secondary colours in addition to shade utilization proportions helps. You may additionally embrace the graphic model you’re going for and present the way it can work with textual content blocks inside precise content material.
As soon as you’ve got chosen your main and secondary colours, outline how a lot every can be used. Setting clear proportions helps create a constant, visually balanced model throughout your content material.
2. An Unclear And Inconsistent Design Language
Nice UI design ought to disappear into the background. If learners are busy determining how one can work together with the platform, they don’t seem to be targeted on what they’re alleged to be taught.
Ensuring you’re basing your Person Interface on a system will make sure that no choice of shade, sizing, placement, and many others., is made haphazardly. A great tip is to check completely different out there UI programs, corresponding to Google’s Materials Design, and make the most of the prevailing constructing blocks to your benefit. This ensures that no matter UI wants you might have can be correctly and constantly executed for any eLearning challenge, whether or not a course on an LMS the place you may customise buttons and your theme or a gamified interactive package deal.
An instance of that is establishing templates for each thinkable sort of web page or slide in your challenge and ensuring the system you create accounts for the assorted potentialities of how your content material could be structured.
This showcases how one can manage varied web page parts right into a cohesive structure utilizing design software program (on this case Figma), to display how all elements align and work together in a unified Person Expertise.
3. A Completely Set Up Course Optimized For Desktop Use That Dismisses The Proportion Of Cellular Customers
This pertains to extremely customizable authoring instruments amongst different platforms. It’s now not optionally available to design for smaller screens. The objective right here is to begin from the smallest display screen doable after which adapt your designs to the bigger ones. This ensures that font sizing, clunky and messy layouts, hover-only interactions, in addition to tiny faucet areas are all prevented. This might additionally inform your button sizing, in addition to the quantity of textual content that seems at a time. A really explicit case of that is utilizing software program corresponding to Articulate Storyline to create absolutely interactive programs. Whereas this software program provides an excessive amount of customizability and a wide range of capabilities and coding, what you design is what you get regardless of the display screen dimension. So, it would not be greatest apply to design your interactions based mostly on desktop-only parameters as a result of it would most definitely translate badly when seen on cell.
Display seize of a course inbuilt Articulate Storyline with a customized UI. Notice: Faucet targets like buttons needs to be not less than 38×38 pixels to make sure straightforward interplay on cell units.
4. A Weak Visible Hierarchy
This goes again to the system you created to your challenge. A course that doesn’t outline the content material construction visually can simply change into boring if not complicated. Using a correct Types Scale will guarantee there may be sufficient readability. And whereas at it, it’s good to guarantee that you’ve got not less than two scales: a desktop and a cell one. And the very best apply right here is to make use of two fonts, one for headings and one other for physique textual content and buttons. This rule has been tried and examined because the invention of printmaking and helps the learners establish the sections of your course extra simply and anchor themselves within the studying journey. One other level of which you ought to be aware is ensuring you’re accounting for the font sizes throughout completely different languages when relevant. Level or pixel sizes change from one font to a different and from one language to a different. So, whereas 16px is the rule for cell font dimension, it’s not essentially true in all languages and font selections. Make time to check and examine.
An instance of the textual content model scales for cell and desktop.
5. Not Sufficient Consideration To The Particulars
After caring for all of the above factors, considerate use of animations, transitions, and suggestions animations could make the interface really feel extra alive and responsive. Using animations sparingly to bolster actions—like a checkmark when a module is accomplished or delicate motion when hovering over interactive parts—will create a greater expertise for the learner.
Now that we coated the UI ache factors, let’s dive into how taking note of sure UX pitfalls can uplift the educational journey.
The Pitfalls Of Poor UX In eLearning
1. Non-Person-Centered Design
Designing a studying journey with out correct analysis and understanding of your learner would possibly flip into wasted time, effort, and sources. To keep away from that, begin with the learner in thoughts. Perceive their objectives, challenges, tech habits, and accessibility wants. Creating learner personas helps you alter the educational preferences and objectives and permits you to work across the learners’ ache factors. Alternatively, mapping the person journey locations you of their head and ensures that precedence is ready to what issues. This validates the selections made and will increase relevance, motivation, and retention.
2. Poorly Timed Disclosures Or Directions Throughout The Studying Journey
Think about beginning a brand new on-line course, and earlier than you even begin with the introduction, you get messages and directions about gadgets with which you have not interacted but. This is applicable strongly to gamified programs. And people needs to be handled utilizing correct gaming UX. Take into consideration progressively onboarding your learner and solely dissipating the related directions or suggestions because the journey unfolds. This may be simply achieved if the journey map has been nicely executed. At that stage you may guarantee how a lot and if you end up disclosing. One other stage the place this may be recognized is throughout person testing the place you may collect suggestions from customers concerning the course onboarding.
An instance of a course that reveals content material progressively, guiding learners step-by-step to keep up focus and keep away from cognitive overload.
3. Lengthy Reads, No Breaks, And Passive Data Dumps
Going by way of content material with no obvious finish in sight might deviate the learner from finishing their course. Microlearning helps trendy learners preferring fast, digestible chunks of content material. It additionally aligns nicely with spaced repetition for higher data retention. To attain that, designing modules which might be 3–7 minutes lengthy, every targeted on a single studying goal, is the way in which to go. It additionally helps when there’s a clear set rhythm to the educational journey. Engagement skyrockets when learners «do» as a substitute of simply «watch.» Interactivity reinforces ideas and retains learners curious. An instance is providing brief scenario-based content material adopted by brief questions that assist recapitulate the data and retain it quicker. Different ways embrace:
- Gamification (factors, badges, leaderboards)
- Animated transitions to information consideration
- Micro-interactions (hover results, visible suggestions)
Display seize of an interactive activity designed to assist learners discover their pursuits and uncover what actually drives them.
4. Accessibility And Inclusivity
Accessibility isn’t just compliance; it is a chance. Designing for customers with disabilities pushes creativity and makes content material higher for everybody.
WCAG rules to comply with: Present alt textual content for all visuals, use transcripts and captions for media, guarantee keyboard navigation works easily, preserve shade distinction and scalable textual content.
Artistic tip: Accessibility does not imply boring. Use haptic suggestions, audio cues, or visible progress bars to counterpoint studying for every type.
Utilizing accessibility testing instruments helps guarantee your design selections meet compliance requirements, and extra importantly, that they create an inclusive, user-friendly expertise for all learners.
Wrap-Up: UX/UI Is A Strategic Benefit
In eLearning, UX/UI shouldn’t be ornament; it is basis. An awesome course design balances kind and performance. It makes studying straightforward, partaking, and inclusive. And when performed proper, it drives actual outcomes: higher retention, increased completion, and empowered learners.
If you happen to’re constructing or bettering your customized eLearning, give attention to:
- Designing for the learner, not the system
- Holding it clear, easy, and interactive
- Guaranteeing accessibility as a energy, not a limitation
- Prioritizing cell usability from the beginning
At Kashida, we construct with these rules in thoughts, as a result of design is not nearly the way it seems to be, however how nicely it really works for each learner.
Kashida
We’re about studying, merely.We design and create customized studying content material and ship it throughout a number of platforms, all the time enriching studying with know-how.Gold winners at Studying Applied sciences Awards UK 2018 for Greatest Studying Applied sciences Mission