Platform
Enabling students to securely and remotely become accredited in their specific field.
Working remotely isn’t the only thing that has changed in the recent years. Accreditations and being able to complete exams have become a requirement. We were challenged with trying to design a platform that is easy and intuitive to students to remotely complete exams, yet secure enough that the accreditation faculty was confident that the platform would remove any form of cheating.
Working with cyber security students we knew that the audience of students are technical enough to be able to find holes. Being able to design a platform that is controlled enough that it risks mitigation was a key requirement in our design thinking.
We successfully launched the GIAC portal with the ability to take practice tests, schedule exams and most importantly take live exams online.
The exam engine we designed enables students to effectively complete their exams in a fully controlled environment with security as the main centre point.
Working alongside the SANS development team our co-developers and design team succeeded in creating a controlled environment that GIAC relies on to carry out remote exams.
"Working with Spinning Fox to deliver our product was a prime example of what happens when UX/UI design aligns with product strategy and engineering excellence to deliver business results that truly delight users."
Jessica Powers
Director of Product
To gain an in-depth understanding of the project and the vision for the new platform, we worked closely with GIAC to map out the process for how students were currently being set up and managed. We aimed to understand the different personas and identify any pain points they were currently experiencing. Our research showed us that there were a lot of confusing and often time-consuming processes. The admin team were working across multiple systems which left room for error and caused student confusion.
As part of building the exam platform, we redesigned everything from the portal to how students complete their certificates. It was essential for us to do in-depth research around gender, age, most used devices, types of exams, and other metrics to ensure we were catering to the various persona’s of the system. From there we based a lot of our decisions on exam condition rules and industry standards.
GIAC’s new exam experience provides candidates with improved features and functionality including step-by-step onboarding, enhanced exam functionality, a user-friendly exam toolbar, and customisable display settings.
We transformed the experience by organising information in a clear, logical way that aimed to guide students to frictionless navigation. We worked closely with different key stakeholders, students and the GIAC product team to identify key features and translated the requirements from user flows into high-fidelity designs.
We ran multiple rounds of moderated and unmoderated testing throughout the process to validate our designs.
Validate the usability of the new design with GIAC candidates
Validate that new design enhances their experience when taking a practice test/live exam
Confirm we have improved the experience and not introduced any elements that are confusing or not useful to students
“It looks beautiful and gives a lot of visual feedback on how much time is left, instructions about breaks and what to expect are crystal clear. I also like the embedded virtual machines.”
GIAC Student Feedback
96%
Rated the User Experience as good or excellent
9 / 10
Would recommend GIAC's Exam Engine vs competitors
Both from a component library and design system, we focused and delivered a strong foundation with scalability in mind, that the client can leverage for years to come.
Requirements gathering workshop, feature mapping, competitor analysis, building personas, stakeholder interviews, product strategy recommendations
User flows, low fidelity wireframes, UI design and clickable prototypes
React application, Firebase, Testing & QA and Styled Components
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