Project: Emble – Empowering Educators with Seamless Course Design Tools

Overview

Emble is an intuitive, user-friendly tool developed to assist educators at RMIT University in creating visually appealing and well-organized Canvas courses. Designed and built in-house, Emble provides a range of visual assets such as banners, columns, callout boxes, and dividers, enabling educators to enhance their courses’ visual design and layout without requiring advanced design skills.

My Role

User Experience Researcher As the User Experience (UX) Researcher for this cross-university collaborative project, my responsibilities included:

Conducting user research to gather and analyze feedback from educators, identifying pain points and areas for improvement.
Collaborating closely with the design and development teams to ensure that Emble met the needs of its users.
Iteratively testing and refining features based on user input to elevate the overall user experience and streamline course creation.

The Story of Emble

RMIT recognized a critical need to enhance Canvas courses’ visual design and layout. Most learning tools were off-the-shelf products that lacked flexibility and did not fully align with RMIT’s unique requirements. Emble was created as a bespoke solution to address these challenges, providing a simple tool with the right assets and flexibility to meet educators’ needs.

Challenges and Objectives

Challenge: Improve Canvas courses’ visual appeal and organization without requiring educators to spend excessive time or acquire design skills.
Objective: Create a tool that raises the overall standard (“the floor”) of course design while allowing educators to focus on impactful teaching and student engagement.

Key Design Considerations

Accessibility: Ensure learning materials support all students by providing accessible design options.
RMIT identity: Integrate RMIT’s visual brand to create a cohesive course experience.
Consistency and structure: Promote a familiar and consistent visual layout to reduce cognitive load and enhance the learning experience.
Meaning: Apply design elements such as colour, size, shapes, and symbols to help students understand content hierarchies and task importance.

Solution: Emble’s Key Features

Elements, blocks, and layouts: Offers modular design assets like single elements (e.g., banners), grouped elements (e.g., callout boxes), and complete page layouts to help educators easily build engaging courses.
Tailored asset availability: Allows colleges and departments to customize assets based on specific needs, making it flexible and scalable.
Seamless integration with canvas: Works alongside the default Canvas editor to provide RMIT-specific assets that are easy to use, require no coding, and align with the university’s visual standards.

Impact and Achievements

Emble successfully raised the “visual design and layout floor” of RMIT’s Canvas courses, improving overall consistency and accessibility.
Enabled educators to quickly and efficiently create engaging, visually appealing courses, freeing up time for other impactful teaching activities.
Supported the rollout of new educational programs like the Bachelor of Business Innovation and Enterprise by providing tailored assets aligned with program requirements.

Explore how Emble simplifies course design on Canvas by providing educators with a suite of intuitive visual assets. Learn how this innovative tool enhances accessibility, consistency, and the overall learning experience, empowering educators to create visually engaging and structured courses effortlessly.

Key Learnings

This project demonstrated the power of a user-centred approach to developing tools that address specific institutional needs. It reinforced the importance of involving educators and stakeholders in the design process to ensure the solution aligns with their workflows and goals.

Possible Future Enhancements

Plans to expand Emble include adding more customizable assets, improving integration with other digital tools, and incorporating analytics to track user engagement and feedback.