Hired as the Digital Services provider, I managed the team that designed and developed a whole learning platform to enable NSCA to teach their Certificate Coaches
The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) is an international nonprofit educational association founded in 1978. The association serves nearly 30,000 members in 52 countries. Their headquarters are in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
In 2018 online education became crucial in terms of time and flexibility for everyone interested in learning anything about any field. NSCA needed to be more effective in teaching potential Personal Trainers for their internationally-recognized sports certifications. Instead of using local courses to prepare people, they gambled on their own Learning Platform, building it from scratch to attend to their students` and teachers` needs.
So 2018 looked like the perfect moment to begin offering these solutions for online education.
User research focuses on understanding how important it is, for a brand like NSCA, to have their own platform completely customized and branded with the company`s style and values for its students and to gauge if potential students would consider online education an option that is as valid as if they would have the course in a traditional center.
Because customization options grew quickly, there was plenty of data available to us. We used this to accurately define their user base, the way these users behaved, and several possible uses for the app.
Understanding how important a brand like NSCA is for Sport Coaches and how it can change the way they offer their services will reveal how great it is to have the exams prepared for in the most comfortable way. Our goal was to design the platform that every NSCA Certificate student would consider as the best way to learn about the Sports World quickly and in a way that helps strengthen their skills, before the exam and after it.
User testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction designed to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice since it gives direct input on how real users use the system. We decided to use this technique in our site with these tasks:
| With third-party online courses | With NSCA online platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Log in and Sign up | 3 | 5 |
| Pay a course | 2 | 5 |
| Take an online test | 2 | 4 |
| Ask a question to the teacher | 2 | 4 |
| Feel more prepared for the exam | 3 | 5 |
One major challenge with the Learning Platform was focusing on the students. Our aim was to improve user engagement by understanding everything about an athlete's mind, allowing us to offer them the best online experience to complement their traditional studies.
We also needed to create a simpler, easier, and faster way to let NSCA Spain know the number of students per course, the country they are taking the course from and to estimate the income in real-time in order to allow them to make more accurate decisions.
The result was that we created a whole Learning Platform from scratch that is able to accomplish educational needs and is ready to host a wide number and categories of courses as well as Live Webinars, quizzes, etc...
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. Mahatma Ghandi, Activist.
NSCA's Spanish headquarters plans to rock it in 2018 with their brand new Live Webinars at their International Conference, so stay tuned!
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