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Building a single source of truth for all teams

At Vedantu, product, category, and design teams worked independently but for the same project. Everything went smoothly initially. Teams felt they were on the right track, and the project was finally moving to its final milestone. 


But in the end…


The product couldn’t be delivered as expected. 


Why? 


Every team was working with a different goal in mind due to different sources of information. 

Due to scattered information, here’s what happened:


All teams had multiple conflicting versions of the same information.


Project scope

Making a document of course information for all Vedantu paid offerings. This was a big project as it required:

  • Gathering course details for school exam students (Class 4-12 pass). 

  • Gathering course details for competitive exam students.

  • Clubbing all details for single and multi-year courses in a single sheet. 

  • Standardizing and setting the nomenclature of the course titles for all paid courses. 

  • Setting the pointers for course plan tables. 

  • Defining the service layers for school and competitive exam students. 

By keeping the principles of information design in mind, the objective was to help users:

  • Handle the unknown and complex data.

  • Minimize or eliminate irritation while understanding course details.


Project duration

Documentation setup: 6 months

Documentation maintenance: Till my tenure with Vedantu

Project members

  • Category head – school exam team (Class 4-8)

  • Category head – school exam team (Class 9-12 pass)

  • Category head – competitive exam team

  • Category head – Olympiad exam team

  • Category team members (with whom I interacted regularly)

  • Design head 

  • Design manager – growth team

  • Product managers – growth team

  • UX researcher

  • UX writer (me)



Objectives

  • Streamline the communication flow between the design, product and category teams.

  • Create a single doc for all the scattered information. 

  • Reduce errors that arise due to multiple conflicting versions of the same information.

  • Ensure every team member gets the same course information at every project stage.



Issues

Misinformation

Due to several stakeholders, different information was floating among team members. Misinformation led to confusion which affected the course understanding. 

Project blocker

Sometimes, the project went back to the wireframe stage even after reaching the development phase. New information came in at the last moment, which led to design re-thinking. 

Misunderstanding

There was no documentation, so the design team couldn’t figure out the right way to frame visual blocks for clear communication. 

Time-consuming tasks

Designers kept on reiterating their designs as the information kept on changing. Every new set of data came with new challenges. And unfortunately, every effort on those challenges went in vain.  

Product dilemma

Every Vedantu paid course comes with three plans — Lite, Classic and Plus (or Premium). But the product team was unclear about the offerings for each plan. So, it was a crucial blocker because the clearer we presented the offers, the clearer our readers would be about buying the course.



Project approach


Here are some of the screenshots highlighting my work:


I gathered essential details for every class and board combination — subjects offered, LIVE classes, LIVE class frequency, class duration, worksheet classes, assignments, practice tests, teaching language, and other important inclusions. 



After figuring out the course details, I sat with the design and category team to define the service layers for all school and competitive exams. It helped the product team in understanding the offerings for every combination. 




I narrowed down the best plan offerings for different classes, along with category and product stakeholders. The exercise helped us in bringing out the prominent features of our plans.



Course title nomenclature

I standardized the course title for Vedantu paid courses by creating flows for every course.


Approach

Clubbing all course names under five categories:

  • School exam courses

  • Two-subject school exam courses

  • JEE/NEET courses 

  • JEE/NEET foundation courses

  • School and JEE/NEET courses

  • Crash/Revision courses


Here are some screenshots of some of the flows:









In the research work, we discovered:


  • Students just wanted the class name and target in the course title. It helped us remove the unnecessary information and, therefore, ellipsis from the course title.

  • Students preferred the word ‘class’ over ‘grade.’ So, we replaced grade with class in every course title. And we made sure we were using ‘class’ everywhere to maintain consistency.

  • School exam students used the class name before the board name and were neutral about the academic year. Therefore, we started the course title with the class name and removed the academic year.

  • Class 11 students were unclear about the duration and coverage of the JEE course. As Vedantu had no 1-year JEE course for Class 11 students, we mentioned it clearly in the course title to avoid any confusion. We also mentioned full syllabus coverage in the course title.

Valuable outcomes


Sorting internal expectations

Earlier teams were unclear about the project scope due to mismatched information. With easy access to course updates, all teams used the same data to make decisions.



Digging user expectations

As the documentation resolved the internal conflict, it helped team members devote more time to understanding the user expectations.



Learning coordination

I learned how to collaborate with different team members to get the information. This project helped me in improving my communication skills. After project completion, I gained confidence and new friends.

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