CASA program · Platform

Designing the learner experience for CLASS.

CLASS is an internal CASA learning platform. I designed and developed its learner-facing front end: the landing view, the navigation, and the patterns that made a large body of regulated learning navigable by the people who had to complete it.

Client: Civil Aviation Safety Authority
program: CASA, 2015–2021
Role: LMS front-end design and development
Access: Internal platform, not public-facing
Platform: Editorial placeholder: Confirm technology and integration details

01Information architecture

Two navigation bars doing two different jobs. The upper row is task-led: find, resume, browse resources, see what is new. The lower row is content-led and only appears once you are inside the platform. Separating intention from subject matter is what stops a mixed-audience platform collapsing into one long menu.

In 60 seconds

The problem: An internal learning platform serving several CASA audiences at once, where the default interface put administration ahead of the learner.
My role: Front-end design and development of the learner-facing experience.
Scope: Landing view, primary navigation, task-led entry points, course-listing patterns and front-end build. Editorial placeholder: Confirm platform scope
Where it got to: A learner-facing front end for CLASS. Editorial placeholder: Add measurable outcome
Built with: Editorial placeholder: Confirm technology and integration details

The situation

CLASS, the CASA Learning Academy for Safe Skies, is an internal platform. It is not public-facing, and nothing here should be read as a consumer product: its users are CASA staff, and its content includes induction, regulatory and technical training, and professional development.

A single learning platform serving induction, regulatory training and professional development has a discoverability problem before it has a design problem. The same person is a new starter, a technical specialist and a professional-development participant at different points in the same year.

What was actually wrong

The default answer to a mixed audience is a menu with everything on it. That works for the person who built the menu.

The design decision on CLASS was to lead with tasks rather than with categories. A learner arriving at the platform has one of a small number of intentions: find something, resume something, see what is new, or find a resource. Naming those intentions as the primary controls means most visits end in one click rather than in a browse.

What it looked like, and why

02Learning experience

Image to supplyThe My Learning panel, at a legible resolution

A capture of this screen exists but is around 710 pixels wide and cannot be enlarged without blurring the course titles and status labels. It also sits beside a panel carrying an internal training-administration email address, which is not published.

The resume state, which is the one most learners actually need. In the low-resolution capture that survives, grade and status sit on the course row rather than behind it, and all five course actions are inline, including the course report. In a regulated setting people need the evidence of completion as often as they need the course. Supply a higher-resolution capture of My Learning

Key design decisions

Lead with tasks, not with the catalogue
The choice
Six large task tiles below the fold-line of the landing view, in place of a course listing.
Why
The platform's audiences share intentions even when they do not share content. Naming the intention gets a specialist and a new starter to different places from the same screen.
Keep course status on the row
The choice
Grade, status and the full action set are rendered inline in My Learning rather than behind a per-course menu.
Why
In a regulated environment the evidence of completion matters as much as the completion. Hiding the course report costs more clicks than the visual tidiness is worth.
Design the frame, accept the shell
The choice
Effort went into the landing view, navigation and course frame, not into fighting the platform's administrative screens.
Why
Designing for a platform you do not control means changing the parts you can actually change. Time spent on the parts you cannot is time not spent on the parts learners see.