Project Goals
Abstract’s innovative version control software for designers required users to adopt new mental models and workflows, creating significant onboarding friction. The reliance on 1:1 training calls with designers was unsustainable as the user base grew, leading to inconsistent education quality, high adoption barriers, and customer churn due to lack of understanding. A scalable, standardized user education solution was needed to improve user onboarding, reduce reliance on manual training, and enhance overall product adoption.
Problem
Solution
My Process
- User research: Survey sent to all users immediately after a training session.
- Learn curricula design: I took a course on how to design and teach curricula for technical topics.
- Project management: OKR project plan to redesign our teaching as a true curricula.
- Content planning: Lead cross-functional workshops to outline the content needed.
- Write and refine scripts: I wrote, copy-edited, and refined nearly 40 video scripts.
- Create visual assets: Slides, graphics, icons, illustrations, and animations.
- Record, post-process, and publish: I used QuickTime, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe XD, and Adobe Audition to record and edit the video and audio for all of the videos before publishing to YouTube.
Research & Analytics
I used qualitative and quantitative research to inform my plan to redesign our teaching materials into a full curricula. At the time, our method of teaching was to meet each new design team with a 1-hour video call to introduce the main workflow of Abstract, followed a few weeks later by a 1-2 hour video call with a set of topics into which customers could choose to dig deeper. Our research consisted of:
- A simple survey sent to each team after a video call that asked them to rate their trainer on a scale from 1-10 and allowed feedback in an open-ended text box.
- Observing and documenting each team's questions and the concepts they struggled with in order to detect patterns and common difficulties.
- Analyzing support tickets to determine which aspects of the product had the highest number of questions.
Core Principles
Clear and concise
- Avoid jargon and explain all new terms
- Avoid overly wordy phrases and fuzzy phrases that could be interpreted differently
- Every sentence should add value
Focus on jobs to be done
- Each video should help users understand how to accomplish their task, rather than focusing on what the feature can do
- The user should feel empowered to do their work
Quickly consumable
- Videos should be 5-10 minutes long to allow for quick consumption and realization of value
- Whenever possible, each video should be able to stand alone
- Recap what has been covered to cement learnings
Tailored for designers
- Use familiar references designers will understand
- Focus on tasks and priorities that designers care about
- Create a guided process that brings designers along from their current workflow to the Abstract workflow
Project Execution
The content planning process started in Google Docs, as this was our company's primary tool when it comes to writing and editing large bodies of content. I used the information and structure that I learned from my curricula design course to lay out the entire course. I started with broad strokes: the content standard, enduring learning, and essential questions that users should be able to answer. I was then able to narrow down the content to fit a rubric, and then created something similar to a lesson plan which helped me break down the videos.
It was important to me that each video would be short and complete so that the curricula would be flexible to additions well into the future, and so that it would be easy to edit videos should anything change.
Since I was responsible for most of the project myself, I was able to use the tools of my choice. I am very familiar with Adobe products, so I used Adobe XD to create the slides and animations that featured in the videos, and then recorded and edited with Adobe Premiere Pro. I planned and created all of the assets in advance so that I could iron out any awkward points or fill any gaps before recording in order to avoid redoing work.
Result
In all, I produced a series of 37 videos across 7 different topics, uploaded to YouTube in a playlist for ease of sharing with our customers. This comprehensive series also allowed us to scale our education and support to over 15,000 users. People using Abstract around the globe could access the videos on demand so we could reach those not in US time zones, and YouTube's closed captioning allowed even more people to learn about Abstract. With this project, we reduced the number of support tickets and time spent resolving those issues, and regained over 20 hours per week of designer time by reducing direct onboarding trainings.
I watched the videos right away and they have definitely helped our team! They are short, to the point and you can quickly find individual answers. Great! — Abstract Customer
