Getting SMART Technologies' Admin Portal and Lumio ready for an additional subscription tier
Timeline:
Role:
Description:
October 2022- February 2023, April 2023 - June 2023
UX Designer, Visual Designer
Updating SMART Technologies' Admin Portal and Lumio to align with the technological upgrades to support an additional subscription tier, as well as support features included in the new subscription tier.
The Problem
Lumio is a web-based learning platform for teachers to connect and engage students with interactive lessons. In order to increase business revenue a new subscription tier with new features was added to Lumio.
The back-end systems responsible for administering the purchase and provisioning of software subscriptions was outdated and unable to support multiple tiers of software.
Additionally, one of the new features added was the Organization Library. School districts or individual schools can use this library to share approved lesson content with their educators. Admins needed to manage the library - who has access, what access they have - within Admin Portal
Background
I will be referring to two separate products;
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Admin Portal is where district and school administrators can claim, assign, and manage their software purchases from SMART Technologies.
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Lumio is the education software that teachers use to create and deliver lessons to students.
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Admin Portal is used by administrators to manage the teachers who use Lumio.
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With this new structure potentially changing user flows in Admin Portal, it was important to see what areas needed to be addressed and ensure that the Organization Library feature would fit into this new context.
Back-end Upgrades
Because of changes to the back-end system, the structure of subscriptions and how they operated were changed. Previously, admins were able to have multiple subscriptions associated with one organization, and these subscriptions could have varying renewal dates.
With the back-end changes, SMART began limiting an organization to a single subscription. This subscription could have multiple tiers associated with it, but the subscription itself would have a single renewal date.
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Organization Library Scoping
The first task when beginning the Organization Library feature was determining whether library roles would be assigned in Admin Portal or in Lumio.
Admin Portal was historically used for managing users (teachers), with a list of user emails and account details. However, I hypothesized that admins who would be assigning roles and editing library details may be users of Lumio and not Admin Portal - as these admins may be in roles where they are more focused on education materials rather than administrative duties like activating subscriptions.
Ultimately I decided that we should assign roles within Admin Portal and manage library details within Lumio. Because of the existing functionality in Admin Portal and the decreased dev effort, it made the most sense to split this functionality.
![Multiple colored boxes with text inside them. Title reads "Fully separated option." There are two columns the first column's title reads "Library Roles (Must be provisioned users). There are three boxes below that read respectively "Library Administrator Can freely add content. Can edit library details. Cannot manage users roles or permissions." "Editor Can freely add cntent. Cannot edit library details. Cannot manage users roles or permissions." "Viewer Type A (Default): Cannot submit content. Type B: Can submit content and delete content the've submitted." The second columns title box reads "Admin Portal Roles." There are two boxes below which read "Administrator Can manage users roles and permissions. [in italics]Can edit library details." "Tech Instructor Can manage users roles and permissions [in italics] Can edit library details."](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/edf17a_2c8afcfdba5f415d9c7bfceb43c6144b~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_0,y_173,w_5014,h_3858/fill/w_382,h_294,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/SaaSy%20Admin%20Portal%20Scoping(6).jpg)
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The next step was to map out the existing Admin Portal user flows and be sure that the creation and management of the Organization Library made sense in context.
In this user flow, I’m skimming over some of the embedded flows in Admin Portal in order to focus on the relevant areas - specifically the areas outlined in blue and red. I’m noting where different functionalities for Organization Library, like editing user roles and library settings, will live within Admin Portal. Additionally, I’m looking at how the split functionality between Admin Portal and Lumio might look.
Adding Users
An Organization Library is created when at least one user is added to a premium tier subscription in Admin Portal, thus adding users is very important with the addition of the Organization Library feature.
There are a few known issues related to adding users in Admin Portal.
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When adding a subscription, there is a delay before it appears on the homepage. Admins often leave Admin Portal believing their subscription is complete and not returning to add users.
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On the homepage, Admins are able to click a link to dive into the users page of a subscription. Regardless of if the subscription had 0 users, the link read “Manage users.”
Additionally, a notification modal was designed and implemented to remind admins to add users to subscriptions that do not have users assigned.
To encourage and remind Admins to return and add users, I revised the existing confirmation screen to show where Admins were in the process, notate visually that they had to wait for their subscription to be activated and provide next steps - specifically adding users.
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Assigning Library Roles
Admins can add users via manual provisioning - for example, adding a list of emails - or via auto provisioning - syncing a list of users from another source that is automatically updated.
After auto provisioning users, there is a delay before the list of users appears in Admin Portal. This causes a problem because with the addition of Organization Library, SMART needed admins to return after the delay to assign roles to their list of users. I was worried that we would encounter an issue, similar to the adding users issue, where admins would leave Admin Portal and not return because they assumed that their subscription was fully set up.
The biggest problem with admins not assigning roles, was that we defaulted a users role to “viewer” and viewers are not able to add or edit content in the Organization Library and are not able to edit Organization Library details like the title or description. This meant that in Lumio, users could be added to an Organization Library but that the Library would remain empty and essentially useless. So it was imperative that admins edited the roles of users to include at least one Library Administrator who had the power to add and edit content, and edit Library details.
I updated the strings on the confirmation screen to note that admins had to return to Admin Portal to complete setting up and assigning roles to their users.
Additionally, new onboarding tips were added to orient admins to the new functionality and serve as an additional reminder to assign roles to their users.
To assign roles to users, an admin would choose the users they wanted to update the role of an click the “Edit library role” button. This brings up a modal where the admin can choose individual roles for a user or assign the same role to all users selected.
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A New Tier on Lumio
With the addition of a new tier, users in Lumio need to be able to identify what tier they are a part of, and what features are available to them. Additionally, there need to be considerations for when an account loses access to certain features.
If the Organization Library does not have a Library Administrator assigned, and an admin attempts to edit roles and does not assign a Library Administrator, a warning appears to remind the admin that a Library Administrator should be assigned. Additionally, a warning banner is displayed at the top of the manage users screen when no Library Administrator is assigned to further remind and encourage admins to assign Library Administrators.
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I wanted to be sure that the upgrade or downgrade of a subscription tier did not result in a poor user experience for our users. In order to ensure this, I looked at all of the scenarios in which upgrading or downgrading may affect Lumio users.
From this map, I was able to identify the timing of the new tier’s onboarding. Users should only be shown this onboarding when it is relevant to them - when they are able to use the corresponding features.
I was also able to identify that we should notify our users when their subscription has been upgraded or downgraded. Unfortunately, due to timelines and technical limitations, notifying a user when their subscription was changed was not feasible. In order to mitigate the negative impact of not telling users when their subscription was changed I opted to clearly show what features they had access to and allow users to view their subscription tier at all times in their avatar menu.
The Solution
In Admin Portal, new UI was designed and implemented to reflect the new back-end structure. Additionally, admin awareness of the job of adding users was improved in various ways to encourage admins to add users to their subscriptions. Finally, new functionality relating to assigning roles for Organization Library users and updating Organization Library settings was designed and implemented.
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In Lumio, UI updates to accommodate a new subscription tier were designed and implemented.
In Lumio, I wanted to measure the success using HEART metrics. I specifically looked at adoption, retention, and task success.
For adoption, I was interested in how areas promoting upgrade encouraged existing and new users to subscribe to the new subscription tier. For retention, I was interested in how areas promoting upgrades or new functionality encouraged existing users to upgrade to the new subscription tier. And for task success, I was interested in ensuring that users could access the information and resources they needed to understand how to upgrade to the new subscription tier.
There wasn’t a significant increase or decrease in accessing information regarding upgrading to a new subscription. This could be explained by the limited features available in the existing new subscription tier. SMART is planning to add additional features to the new subscription tier in Lumio in the future, so it will be important to monitor these metrics as new functionality is added.
Lumio’s new subscription tier did increase business revenue, netting SMART new sales and customers, as well as revenue from existing customers upgrading their subscription tier.
Reflection
These features contained a lot of moving pieces that crossed over multiple teams and overall, I am very happy with my communication with other relevant teams and stakeholders. I participated in dependency meetings with the UX team to align on pieces that crossed UX features (eg: Organization Library), I participated in biweekly meetings relating to the back-end upgrades, weekly meetings with the Dev managers and Product Manager responsible for these features, and communicated often with the developers directly implementing these features.
Historically, there has been no data metrics available for Admin Portal. This makes evaluating feature success very difficult and we rely more on support tickets and other areas of feedback (eg: uservoice) to evaluate success.
One of my disappointments relating to these features was the lack of user research. The timeline was too rushed to conduct user research or usability testing while still in implementation. I do wish I would have pushed more for usability testing after implementation to test our solutions and create a follow up feature to address any issues that arose.
The Team
Justin Gordon
Product Manager
Priti Kamal
David Cuestas
