Published Apr 27, 2022

UX State of Mind: Designing better Open edX themes

By Kira Miller
1 min

Meta

Date: April 27, 2022 16:45 UTC+1, Room -113

Presenters: Cassandra Zamparini-Kern

Scoping out the competition

  • What can be emulated, what should be avoided

  • edX’s Course Info page

    • Most important info was shown immediately, enroll button is always visible, text heavy parts are hidden

  • Coursera (boooo)

    • Progress is shown nicely, expectations are managed by showing time, good translation to mobile

  • Hubspot

    • Sidebar is well spaced, clean

  • Udemy

    • Very focused on course, removes main navigation

User Research

  • Posted a thread on open edX forum, got lots of feedback

    • “The interface should ‘get out of my way’ so I can focus on learning”

    • Remove everything that doesn’t pertain for the learning

UI

  • Had two themes, calm and monotone - but people didn’t love it

    • They wanted to change to branding colors, but weren’t sure if they were going to pass accessibility checks

What’s Next

  • Creating style guide

  • Adherence to edx’s accessibility guidelines

  • Theming

What’s Next

  • How do you toggle between the themes?

    • You select a theme originally and it persists to all the future pages

  • What is the cost for the theme?

    • Free to use, as long as OpenCraft is used in the footer!

 

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