Cambly is an online platform that offers on-demand access to native English speakers for language learners worldwide. Through one-on-one video chat sessions users can practice English in real-time.
Classroom
Cambly's Classroom feature provides a structured curriculum for tutors, ensuring consistency for students. It includes additional tools like courses, screen sharing, drawing, and chat all designed to create a more engaging and effective learning environment.
The Role
I joined Cambly from March 2019 to November 2019 as the first product designer. My immediate responsibilities were to accelerate and design improvements and fill gaps in the Cambly web experience.
I was part of a small team of 8 consisting of the engineers, product manager and our two co-founders. As the product designer I was responsible for research, interaction design, visual design, branding, and overall user experience.
The CHALLENGE
Teaching standards
Students could choose from a group of online tutors to learn English. However, the immediate issue was that each tutor had different approaches and teaching styles, leading to inconsistent learning experiences. A student would often encounter multiple tutors each with different methodologies which led to inconsistent lessons and a decline in quality.
Over time students began waiting for one or two preferred tutors to become available which created several problems. New tutors struggled to get students, while the most popular tutors became overbooked. We needed to develop a platform that ensured consistent quality and curriculum while still allowing tutors the flexibility to teach in their own style.
Photo Credit Youtube Cambly
The Approach
Proficiency with Purpose
I personally lacked knowledge in the digital education space and needed to quickly grasp the nature of teaching in the digital world. I approached all aspects of the project collaboratively and worked closely with our product manager who had an education background.
I conducted competitive research and interviewed tutors to gain as much knowledge as possible. I aimed to understand the day-to-day challenges tutors faced on our platform. I also constructed surveys targeting our tutors and students to identify growth opportunities and pain points.
I spent countless hours testing Cambly to become an expert on the platform. I absorbed any content related to digital education technology that I could find. My goal was to immerse myself as quickly as possible to make a positive impact immediately.
Prior versions of 2019 Cambly video chat.
The Discovery
Personalized Learning success
Insights revealed that tutors faced significant challenges in matching new students' English skills with their personal curriculum. Because new students came with a wide range of English levels and backgrounds, the constant change in students and the lack of resources to standardize an English curriculum became a bottleneck.
"There is no prep, no marking, no assessment tests. There's no classroom management and its frustrating."
User insights showed that students wanted flexibility when learning on their own time. They sought a sense of personal growth and wanted each lesson to feel like they were progressing.
To improve the quality of the teacher-student platform, my assumption was that we needed to provide a baseline solution that addressed the following needs:
Offering tools that would support multiple forms of teaching
Teacher to student shared progression framework
The VISION
One Classroom at a Time
Our vision was to create a classroom environment that empowered both tutors and students to thrive in a dynamic and flexible learning space. Our goal was to create a setting where personalized education meets global standards. This ensured every learner could achieve fluency and confidence in English regardless of their background or skill level. We aimed to build classrooms where every lesson contributed to meaningful progress, students felt supported and motivated, and tutors were equipped to inspire and guide their students toward success.
The Solution
A video-to-video classroom that seamlessly integrates curriculum lessons with communication tools creating an immersive and interactive learning experience.
built by teachers for teachers
The curriculum was built from the ground up by active professional english teachers. Tutors and students can view courses during a live call and independently.
Empower tutors to teach effectively
Tutors can write persistent notes about each student from lesson to lesson, maintain a continuous chat, and continue course training for each student.
The Framework
Working with small teams and limited resources pushed me to rely on competitive analysis as a key component of my research. This approach allowed me to identify strengths and weaknesses in Cambly's offerings by comparing them to market standards. Understanding what competitors were doing right and where they were falling short enabled me to maximize my time and confidently move forward with my designs.
By leveraging insights, research, and the collective experience of my team members, I was able to develop my design principles.
Principles
Progression over Quick Wins.
Foster an environment of continuous learning rather than one off memories.
Collaborative over Individual.
Promote collaboration and interaction between tutors and students over individual learning.
Empowerment over Automation.
Equip tutors with tools that provide insights into each student's challenges, rather than a rigid one-size-fits-all approach.
Bumps in the road
An early design challenge was that our tutors primarily used lower resolutions like 800 x 600. Insights revealed that many tutors were on-the-go expats traveling the world, and Chromebooks were popular due to their cost-effectiveness. I had to be mindful of the technical constraints faced by our tutors compared to our students, who were using larger 16:9 display ratios.
Another constraint was that our course content was designed with 4:3-sized images. I had to carefully consider which components to prioritize and how to build a responsive layout.
16:9 vs 4:3 layout exploration
My initial assumption was to prioritize students using 16:9 aspect ratio and then accommodate a 4:3 layout for all other cases. After working closely with our product manager we collectively agreed that designing the best experience for paying users, rather than tutors, was the best way to move forward and aligned with our product goals.
Curriculum and courses
My assumption was that we needed a flexible design that allowed courses to be easily adapted and expanded to accommodate varying levels of English proficiency and learning needs. Given the aggressive timeline, I didn’t have the luxury to develop a custom ux for our database of courses. Instead, I relied heavily on Material Design specs and libraries to establish base guidelines and rules. I approached each design with prioritizing scalable list to ensure it could be modular and scalable without requiring extensive future support.
For tutors the courses delivered consistent lessons while still offering the flexibility to personalize content for individual students. For students the design focused on progression enabling them to track their progress, revisit lessons, and build on their knowledge over time.
Learn at your own pace
We wanted to address a user need where students desired a sense of progression, regardless of which tutor they were matched with. My approach was to allow users to set a course or lesson at the start of each class. We avoided giving students control over layout changes during a live call, as this could disrupt the flow of the lesson and hinder the tutor's ability to teach effectively.
This approach enabled new tutors to match with any student and provide a consistent and structured learning experience. It also ensured that students could connect with any tutor and still practice exactly what they wanted to learn.
Prototyping and Development
We aimed to bring the classroom feature to market with a very aggressive deadline. Our goal was to launch as quickly as possible to stay ahead of the competition who were likely reaching the same conclusion as we were.
With a launch date set, we worked backwards because our constraint were tied to engineering milestones. This timeline left very little room for design refinement. To address these challenges I conducted live testing and made organic course corrections to the designs with each engineering update in the development build. I had numerous hallway discussions with the engineering team to unblock and smooth out any technical hurdles or constraints that arose.
One design challenge I had to constantly navigate was our reliance on the Vonage API. Working with a small team, we didn’t have the luxury or time to build custom proprietary solutions and had to depend heavily on partner APIs. While Vonage was incredible out of the box, many of my designs required me to rethink solutions.
Left: Early Components added, Right: Layout improvements
Live testing
We A/B tested the classroom with a mix of our most popular tutors and new tutors to gain valuable insight and data. All our lessons were recorded for safety and legality reasons but it also offered me valuable data to learn how users interact with our product.
Blocked tutor & student camera for anonymity
The EXecution
Gallery of Cambly Classroom
The Impact
We launched in 2019, increasing our user engagement and reach, total tutoring sessions per day, and active tutors globally.
33% increase in registered users
60,000+ tutoring sessions per day (free+paid)
6,000+ active tutors
This is a great addition and something I've been wanting since I started! I'm glad they introduced the new classroom!
-tutor: Cambly facebook group
What I like about Cambly is that all the tutors are native English speakers and their high teaching quality. My English has improved a lot and I am having fun studying it!"
-anonymous student