Hello Friends,

Exactly one month ago we revealed our new site — the most significant change to Learn Squared since we launched in 2015.

Our new site shows that Learn Squared isn’t just a place where you learn from the best — it’s also home to an amazing and vibrant community of learners, and it was essential for us to place this community at the center of everything.

We’ve compiled a list below of some of the site’s newest features we’d like to share with you. If you have any additional feedback or requests, please let us know.

PLANNING THE NEW WEBSITE

When we started planning the redesign of our website, we asked users which features were integral to the Learn Squared experience. Based on your feedback, we knew the areas we had to focus on to improve the overall learning experience and as a consequence, the success rate of our students.

These main areas of focus were:

  1. Revisit the video player for a smoother viewing experience.
  2. Bring the homework gallery at the center of the platform to showcase the incredible talent within our community better.
  3. Facilitate the interaction between your peers and you by developing new tools for them to document their process, comment properly and like their peer’s work, and easily share their content on social media.

We knew that if we refined these three areas, it would have the most significant impact on the overall student experience.

1. Improved Viewing Experience

Our new video player now allows you to play your videos in regular, theatre, and full-screen mode. You also have the option to toggle auto-play ON and OFF, as well as control the resolution and speed at which the video is playing. And finally boasting a new look, the course playlist makes it easier to navigate the lesson’s content without dropping out of full-screen mode.

2. Tracking Your Progress

As you make progress in your courses, you’ll notice that your progress bar will start filling up to inform you of much work you have left to get to the finish line. And that progress bar isn’t going to fill itself, so you’d better get to work!

3. Featured Student Work

When visiting the new ‘Student Work’ page, you’ll likely notice the beautiful large banner up top. And make no mistake — these artworks are not from our instructors, but are instead promoting the amazing talent among the Learn Squared student base. For each featured homework, you’ll find a link that will take you to that particular work’s process page, which has also been redesigned from the ground up.

4. Uploading Homework

Our new homework uploader is as versatile as it gets. You might only want to upload a series of images to show your work and sketches. But in case you want to go all out, the uploader now allows you to document every single step of your process and to organize it as you see by adding subsections which consist of text, images, or videos to be as transparent about your process as you want. We even support PDF uploads for courses which call for creating pitch decks!

5. Updated Dashboard

Besides giving you access to your settings, orders, and invoices, the updated dashboard now enables you to see all the information regarding your Learn Squared journey in one place. You’ll have quick access to your courses, as well as your progress for each one of them. You’ll also find a gallery with all the homework you’ve submitted, as well as notifications regarding courses you’re enrolled in, and activity from the community relevant to the work you’ve posted or conversations you’ve participated in.

6. Feedback for Success

Through our new feedback system, members of the Learn Squared community can submit feature or instructor requests, which will be voted up or down by other community members. You’ll also have the ability to follow the progress of any upvoted feature we start developing as well as start a conversation to help improve the ideas.

7. Need Help?

Our new Help Center is a one-stop shop for any questions you might have along your journey. Whether you have questions about placing an order, starting a mentorship, or dealing with homework, you’ll find all the answers to any questions you might have. We’ll do our best to keep this up to date regularly so you’ll always have a place to turn when you’re looking for answers.

8. What’s Next?

We are also working on integrating more exciting features soon, such as a community hub with upcoming events, live streams, and more; a Student Journeys section to highlight remarkable success stories from members of the community; supporting additional payment methods, the ability to search for student profiles; and much more!

Again, many of these are features which community members have requested from us, and we’ve worked hard bringing them to life, and we’re always interested to hear more from you. The fastest way for us to provide you with your ideal user experience is by letting us know what you would like to see on the platform in the future.

Finally, we’d like to give a massive shout-out to the rock stars who helped us bring the newest version of Learn Squared to life: designer Alec Burns for giving us the most beautiful facelift you’ve ever seen (who we’d like to mention started as a Learn Squared student!). And Drupal developer Patrick Waller for custom-building everything and making sure all of our new features work seamlessly behind the scenes and front-end developers Boxhead for applying the fresh coat of paint and bringing it all together. We’d also like to give a very special thanks to a few other lovely peeps who helped us tons along the way, including Ash Thorp, Mohamed Thiam, Aaron Dhanda, Logan Baker, and our amazing Learn Squared community. We couldn’t have done it without you!