Scaling Alison’s online courses with the launch of two new products

Turning one of the world’s largest free learning platforms, with 20 million registered learners in 2021, from a course encyclopedia into an all-round career tool.

2021Product DesignUX Research + DesignProduct Expansion

See the products

Recommendation dashboard

Alison learner dashboard with personalised course and career recommendations

Click to view product

Alison resume builder on the personal details step, with a live resume preview

Click to view productResume builder

Timeline: 2021
Role: Product Design · UX Researcher · Growth Strategist
Team of 3: UI/UX Designer · UX Researcher · Product Manager
Status: Live on site: alison.com
Read time: 3 min read

Alison is one of the world’s largest free learning platforms for education and skills training. Upon acquiring Dash Beyond, our team was brought in to transform the platform from a course encyclopedia into an all-round career tool. Along with a product designer and manager, I designed the product to integrate a personalised learning and career experience. This entailed an onboarding flow to understand our learners better, along with building a resume tool to help support their career needs.

What we shipped

Personalised Recommendations
Learner Dashboard
Resume Builder

Design intervention

Building two folds of a career tool: an onboarding experience to capture personalised recommendations, and a resume builder to help reflect our learners’ career journey and skillsets.

Alison’s offerings

Given the nature of Alison’s clientele and their needs, we expanded beyond simply serving online courses to supporting our users’ ability to apply for jobs through two new products.

From a course encyclopedia to a career toolkit

The acquisition of Dash Beyond resulted in an opportunity to expand Alison’s offerings. My team and I designed a user journey to transition Alison from a course encyclopedia to a career toolkit. We placed each learner’s personalised experience of courses at the centre. From there, we let it flow into developing a resume, a profile that reflects their growth, and assessments they can take to reflect on their workplace personality.

Coursera, Udemy and edX do not have profile pages.A learner profile became the anchor for everything else.
“Your resume is 30% done. Complete it now.”Profile details, expertise and certificates carry into the resume.
Learners can show varied interests.Some might want career categories hidden from recruiters.

User journey map. Click to enlarge.

Product 1

Personalised Recommendations

An onboarding flow that asks as few questions as possible, while capturing the optimum amount of a learner’s interests and goals.

Learner dashboard

Where both products meet

The dashboard brings recommendations, the resume builder and the workplace personality assessment into one place. Returning learners track their courses, certificates, study reminders and medals.

New learner

Completed courses

Certificates

Only 2% of resumes make it past the second round.

Alison’s resume builder guides learners to their perfect job-winning resume. They can start with a template, autofill from their profile or start afresh, and add their Alison certifications in a click.

The result

Live on alison.com

Personalised recommendations, the learner dashboard and the resume builder are live on Alison today.

50Musers of Alison can now access and benefit from the tools

Visit alison.com

Scaling Alison’s online courses with the launch of two new products

From a course encyclopedia to a career toolkit

Personalised Recommendations

Meet learners where they are

Four steps to a personalised Alison

Where both products meet

Resume Builder

Building a resume, step by step

Live on alison.com