Case Study
Instructure’s Gauge LTI
Gauge was intended to be an Assessment Management solution, mirroring the Learning Management product offering of Canvas, but greatly expanded to account for county and state-mandated assessment requirements.
Information density and cognitive load issues were regular challenges, as well as the wildly differing standards that exist from state to state. My job as the designer was to present an interface to the user that provided cohesion and predictable behavior. I needed to leverage and evolve design philosophies that existed in Canvas so the user was empowered to jump into this new environment without requiring extensive training and education. This included taking district admins, classroom instructors, and students into account.
All of this was done with the goal of contributing back to, or simply supporting decisions made in, the Design System that was being developed.
The Dashboard
The initial design for the Gauge dashboard was based on a Canvas design that had been done without user testing or research. As such, the result was severely limited in its functional value and not flexible enough to accommodate the needs Gauge presented. The goal of the redesign was to provide a solution that was informed by user interviews and internal data. It standardized how information was displayed in an effort to ease cognitive load and enable easier manipulation of the data presented.
This redesign was also used to sponsor the standardization of table appearance and behavior within Canvas for Instructure’s design system.
Carrying forward those design decisions into additional Gauge support pages
The value in standardizing information displays was readily apparent as previously designed pages were rehabbed. Simple functionality like ascending and descending sorting became available. Predictable sight lines and indicators that a user could interact with elements were allowed to exist whereas the a la carte solutions previously made this difficult to accomplish.
Build - Stimulus Element
The Stimulus Element was a late addition to the pre-established Build tool within Canvas. The solution needed to allow the instructor to add an element that was effectively free-form in its content, but built primarily for passages of text. The instructor would also need to attach any number of question types to the passage. In addition to this, the Stimulus Element needed to be reflected in the left-hand quiz overview, as well as mirror the functionality offered in the primary content area.
The solution I delivered adhered to the pre-existing structure of Build while allowing a great deal of flexibility in the content added, as well as the inclusion of testing elements. The right-hand side of the Stimulus Element scrolled independently, allowing the instructor to add as few or many elements as desired, without causing extensive vertical sprawl. The decisions were based off user data which demonstrated the average question count to be low enough to justify its use.
Navigation iterations
Over time, it became apparent from user interviews and mining the community forums that the navigation was problematic. Inconsistent use of flyout menus, interrupting user workflows by requiring them to abandon one page to check related information on another, and white labeling issues all cropped up.
The navigation redesign experiments were intended to meet a number of these user needs and reposition how the company thought of Canvas versus the multiple first and third party products it housed. Establishing a proper hierarchy and treating Canvas as an ecoystem that the products and LTIs existed in helped clarify and inform user workflows that had developed over the years.
Something as requested and simple as providing the user’s schedule, an invaluable piece of information for a teacher, was solved quickly and easily with the redesign. Allowing the user to orient themselves before engaging with the various tools and products Canvas offered created a confident, efficient path for the user.
