Real Vision Platform

Improving the Notes Feature

Overview

The Real Vision 2.0 platform was designed to give members a place to build community, access financial tools, and gain expert knowledge to support their learning journey. This project focuses on a 4 week effort to improve the Notes MVP feature, a tool that allows members to take and save notes as they consume Real Vision content.

My Role - UXD, UXR

I conducted extensive research prior to this project which influenced the feature's direction. These insights came from various user interviews, surveys, and member feedback channels. I also worked closely with a Sr. Product Designer, Design Director, and PM to consult on, define, and implement interaction improvements.

About Notes V1

After conducting generative research to gain a better understanding of user study habits, we discovered that detailed note-taking is a large and universal part of the learning process, no matter the subject.

From these insights we created V1 of the Notes feature. The long-term vision was a second brain ecosystem allowing users to capture their thoughts and research across Real Vision and across the web.

For the Notes MVP, we wanted to start simple by giving users an integrated place to jot down their thoughts within their RV account. Once we better understood how members were using Notes in their workflow, we could focus on incremental improvements to make the feature more useful.

Problem Space - Improving Notes

After the initial launch of Real Vision 2.0, usage of the Notes feature was low with only 10% of users taking notes and an average of 3-4 notes saved per user.

Our product and executive teams wanted to understand why usage was low and prioritize improvements with the goal of increasing adoption. User feedback collected since launch gave us a starting point and clear picture of opportunities to make Notes more useful for our members:

We used this data to kick-off a discovery session and exploratory brainstorm to surface key painpoints.

The results of our workshop uncovered three distinct issues for the design team to begin working from:

  1. Findability

HMW make the Notes feature easier to find and access throughout the platform?


Problem:

  • Customers cannot easily access their previously created notes

  • Customers cannot easily access a way to create a new note

  1. Workflow

HMW improve the workflow for accessing or editing previously created notes?


Problem:

  • Users want the ability to add to a previously created note in context with the related content, rather than taking a new note each time.

  • Users want related notes viewable/editable/accessible somehow from Content Page

  1. Organization

HMW improve the organization structure of new and previously created notes?


Problem:

  • The current organization structure of Notes is not meeting customer expectations

  • Users want to organize their notes by category, topic, folder, etc

Solutions - Creating Notes V2

Findability - Ease of access to creating and accessing new note

Before - Notes V1:

The Notes feature was originally integrated into the RV AI Chat Bot. The user needed to click the floating action button and read through the prompts to find "Write Note"

After - Notes V2:

To improve findability, we overhauled the floating action button and introduced a menu to separate Notes and AI bot functions. The FAB icon was changed from a bot to a “+” to give it a bias toward action and hopefully make it more recognizable.

When clicked, the user is given a choice to take a new note, view their existing notes, or access the AI chat bot. These changes separated the notes feature from bot to make it easier to find.

We also added an icon/button to the playback page to remind the user if they have previously taken notes linked to this specific content:

Workflow - Access and Edit Existing Notes From Anywhere

Previously, users had to navigate to their library in order to make edits to existing notes rather than viewing them in context with the content they are watching.


To improve this, we introduced a link between content and notes to increase visibility and quickly recall notes related to a specific video or report. When the user is taking a new note from a content page, a link to that content is auto-generated and attached to the new note.

A toggle view for “All Notes” and “Related” was introduced to the notes panel allowing users to access their notes archive or previously linked notes from anywhere on platform.

Organization - Structuring Notes by Topic, Category, etc

Due to the low average number of notes per user and engineering bandwidth, organizing by category, topic, and folder was de-prioritized for this project. We decided this was best until we could collect more data once adoption became higher. We would then be able to better discern how members want their notes organized.


A separate project was in the works to give users the option to make their Notes public and shareable which would also affect viewing permissions and organization within the library.

Challenges and Reflection

Time constraints

As with many projects, limited time was a factor that kept us from diving deeper into why members were not using the Notes feature. We were not able to conduct additional usability research before these improvements were shipped, however I believe we made a net positive impact using the data that we had available to us.


Lack of need

From member interviews, we also knew that those who take notes as part of their learning process typically already have more robust tools that they rely on to keep their thoughts organized; free tools like Notion, OneNote, etc.


Using Real Vision's note-taking function may provide convenience, but access to it also depends on having an RV subscription. Using 3rd party tools alleviates the worry of losing access to their work if they ever choose to discontinue their RV account.


Research

Ideally there would have been more research efforts built in to this project timeline. Pulling together a usbaility study to test our solutions before shipping them would have given us more confidence in our improvements.


I also would have liked to track back-end user sessions after release to see if usage increased (# of members taking notes, # of notes per user) and see if more members were finding the Notes tool.

Ashley Blackwell

2024