Microsoft Microsoft

MS Learn - Exam Discounts

To provide a new, modern, frictionless experience for Microsoft’s Learners to redeem exam discounts in the flow of registration.

Before and After
Final experience

Summary

Microsoft provides discounts on exams for its Certifications programs. Exam Discount refers to digital discounts offered in the flow of registration to learners based upon identity. A user does not need to rely on codes to receive a discount on exam pricing.

Problem

  • For exam discounts, before the new UI we were handing out vouchers that cost the organization XX-XXk per WEEK.
  • Users didn’t have a view of ALL their available exam discounts when registering for an exam.
  • Also, such a discount was applied at the end of the registration process which provides a lack of visibility during the registration process.

Hypothesis

Providing a new, modern, frictionless experience for Microsoft’s Learners to redeem exam discounts in the flow of registration will increase the number of certifications achieved. Also, it will eliminate any fraud resale of coupons vouchers to ineligible users. 

MOST IMPORTANT
Many accessible issues due to old infraestructure.

Role experience

I was the UX designer lead on a team comprised of 2 developers and a product manager. I was responsible for determining the overall design direction of the project, while collaborating with the rest of the team on ideation.


Goals


Discover

Interviews

The interviews helped me understand learner’s behaviors and what are the common pains they have when registering and applying discounts before taking an certified exam.

These are some of their pain points:

  • Manual entry of discounts codes
  • Visual representations (coupons)
  • Navigation
  • Design consistency - MS standards
Lo-fi prototype
Customer Journey Map

Understanding the current experience

Consistency and Standards

The user selects the event they attended from the dropdown of eligible events, and selects “verify account”.

A popup window with the even login options appears.

Lo-fi prototype
Discount Page

Accessibility

Many accessible issues due to old infraestructure.

Accessibility issues

Define

Identifying areas for improvement

  • Navigation and structure issues
    • Step process to guide users how to apply discounts
    • Organized, formatted, and displayed content
  • Link accounts
    • How to link accounts when using alternative email
    • How to obtain discount for event attendees and org employees
  • Discounts managment and visualization
    • IxD for claiming discounts (Only one discount per exam)
    • Discount visuals
  • Fluent Design language (react)
    • Responsive
    • Web controls library

Communicating design

Wireframing

Ideation
Coupons final concept
Discount coupon final design

Prototype

Prototyping was the most effective way to gain meaningful feedback from the team, consensus from stakeholders and approval from leadership.


Evaluate

6 users participated in a moderated, remote study on an exam discounts prototype. Using a think aloud protocol.

  • Task 1: Claiming an exam discount through their employer (Contoso)
  • Task 2: Stopping the sharing of their data with their employer
  • Task 3: Claiming a student discount
  • Task 4: Updating the email address in their certification profile
  • Task 5: Registering for a free exam with a voucher code

Results

The modernization of the Exam Registration Experience has had a positive impact on the process of claiming discounts. The claiming rate has been significantly increased. After the released for the FY21 the total number of discounts used by customers reached ###,## discounts.

Reached Grade C in the accessibility scale.