2-week Diary Study for Hubspot Academy Learners
Context
A research project that I initiated while I was working on HubSpot Academy with two main objectives:
First, I wanted to understand how learners are currently consuming Academy content. Our team to date did not have research on the learner journey, only research regarding the find-ability of content on HubSpot Academy and learner satisfaction with Academy content after a course was complete.
Next, I wanted to understand why learners were not able to apply what they’ve learned on Academy into their professional roles. From previous research, I saw that one area where the Academy platform was underserved was in learners being able to apply what they’ve learned on the platform to the real world.
Tools: Forsta Digital Diaries
Method Used: Diary Study
Participants: 6 Learners
Timeline: 3 months
Recruitment
6 learners were recruited to be apart of the diary study and they fell into 3 different categories of learning motivation:
First-time learners on HubSpot Academy
Current HubSpot Academy learners (completed at least 5 lessons in the past 6 months) interested in upskilling in areas such as marketing, sales and development
Current Hubspot Academy learners interested in developing Hubspot CRM skills
Participants were given 3 parameters to follow:
Participants were required to complete 4 hours of learning per week
Participants were given free reign on content that they wanted to complete
2 participants were asked to complete content in their native language (French and Spanish) for the first week
Diary Study
What is a diary study?
This UX research method asks participants to keep a log of their thoughts, experiences and activities over a period of time. Diary studies provide a self-reported and longitudinal record of user behaviors and attitudes that researchers can analyze to better understand habits and patterns.
In order to keep learners on track and get relevant information, I provided diary prompts (seen below). Depending on their answer to the initial prompt, I provided follow up questions for participants to answer.
Results
For each participant that went through the diary study, I was able to create individual journey maps that showed the learner’s experience over the course of 2-weeks when learning on HubSpot Academy.
During the readout to the teams, I presented the themes that I observed from the 6 participants over the course of their learning journeys… (1/1)
…I also created a list of prioritized recommendations for the team that was then logged and tracked in our project management tools. Because I had kept stakeholders in the loop during this project, even before the presentation was given, some of our marketing and design teams were already making progress on some recommendations. (2/2)
Impact
After the readout was presented, I was able to observe the impact of this project with new content that was being provided on HubSpot Academy.
Academy had launched their first ever video with a Hubspot partner who taught users how to set up an integration with a data warehouse, along with other ways GTM teams can action on that data.
This content was practical, focused on a goal, and incorporated knowledge checks and assessments throughout the course, all areas that was identified as needing to be improved on Academy’s platform.