Certificate
Flow Redesign

Dementia Training Australia (DTA) is a government-funded consortium providing dementia care education. Their online portal, dta.com.au, offers accredited and non-accredited courses. Upon completion, learners are issued certificates, valuable for demonstrating attainment to managers and in gaining Continuing Professional Development(CPD) points.

DTA's Service and Support team were facing a high volume of learner queries seeking assistance in generating & locating their course completion certificates. This strained resources and often required escalation to the technical team for support. Problems with the way users accessed their certificates were evident, and as the user base grew, these issues compounded. With support requests mounting and user frustration growing, it was clear that DTA needed to overhaul their certificate processes.

After a quick appraisal, a multitude of usability issues and potential ‘quick fixes’ were evident. However, in order to validate and prioritise these fixes effectively, it was important to lean on the wealth of firsthand accounts afforded to us in the form of user support requests. Drawing on the extensive hands-on experience of the support team our analysis highlighted several key themes such as: unclear navigation leading users to close the browser tab before course completion, multiple redirections when navigating to and from courses causing whiplash, and the post-course feedback survey being in an unexpected position, barring certificate generation for some.

In order to corroborate these themes we leveraged our site monitoring tools and course logs to determine actual user behaviours; actions, journeys and, most critically, exit points. This activity proved invaluable in verifying our assumptions and the documented end-user experiences. It also unexpectedly led to uncovering implicit user preferences such as 'desire paths’ or the unplanned journeys users were taking to access their certificates through the dashboard interface. These insights, though not initially anticipated, guided us in expanding our perspective and directly led to the implementation of shortcuts within key dashboard elements.

With our analysis complete and a strategic approach in place, we began working closely with the development team to ensure our design recommendations aligned to technical constraints. Once we finalised our implementation plan, we transitioned into an iterative cycle of design, development, testing, and deployment, integrating these tasks into our regular work schedule until completion.