Interplay Learning
Product
Web Application
Timeline
8 Weeks
My Role
Challenge
UX Designer
No User Interviews Allowed
Introduction
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Interplay Learning is an online learning and workforce development platform specializing in training for the skilled trades.
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The company uses immersive 3D simulations, virtual reality (VR), and online courses to help individuals and organizations develop practical, job-ready skills.
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Its training covers industries such as HVAC, plumbing, electrical, solar, and facilities maintenance.
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The platform allows learners to practice real-world scenarios in a virtual environment, helping them build confidence and technical skills before applying them on the job.
The project
The project focused on evaluating and improving key areas of Interplay Learning's website, with an emphasis on helping visitors better understand the platform, identify the solutions relevant to them, and navigate toward the right next step.
Initial Problem
Interplay Learning offers several solutions for different audiences, from large enterprises and small businesses to educational institutions and individual learners.
However, the existing website did not communicate these offerings as clearly as it could. Visitors had to navigate through a broad range of information, and it wasn't always easy to understand which solution was relevant to their needs or where to go next.
The homepage also needed to do a better job of communicating the value of the platform, connecting with visitors' challenges, and guiding them toward the appropriate solution.
Initial Goal
Improve the website experience by creating a clearer, more intuitive journey for visitors.
The focus was to:
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Make the value of Interplay Learning easier to understand.
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Help different audiences identify the solutions most relevant to them.
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Improve navigation and the overall information hierarchy.
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Create clearer calls to action and more consistent pathways.
Our Team
This project was completed through Optidge, a marketing agency where I worked as part of the digital team. I collaborated closely with Shaul Nemtzov, working together to evaluate the existing website, explore opportunities for improvement, and shape the direction of the proposed experience.
I led the UX research and analysis, bringing insights and recommendations into the process while collaborating with the design side of the project.
Optidge
Marketing Agency
Shaul Nemtzov
UX Designer
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Chayala (Me)
UX Designer
Research
Research Process
Before jumping into design, I wanted to understand the experience from multiple perspectives. I started by looking at the website as a visitor, then explored the business behind it and the people it was trying to reach.
My research combines business and audience research, a UX audit, competitive analysis, a user interview, and behavioral observations. This helped me understand what Interplay offered, what its audiences needed, and where the existing website was falling short.
01.
UX Audit
02.
User Behavior Analysis
03.
Competitive Analysis
04.
Synthesis
05.
Wireframes
​Evaluating the Existing Website
Before thinking about solutions, I wanted to understand how effectively the existing website communicated Interplay Learning's services and guided visitors through the experience.
I reviewed the homepage and three key landing pages, looking at the experience from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with the company.
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I asked myself..
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Is it immediately clear what Interplay Learning offers?
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Can visitors understand the value of the platform?
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Can visitors easily identify which solution is right for them?
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Does the navigation make sense?
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Is the information easy to find?
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Are the calls to action clear and meaningful?
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Does the content speak to the needs of different audiences?
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What I was looking to uncover
​I wanted to identify where the website was making visitors work harder than necessary to understand the product, find relevant information, or take the next step.
Understanding the Business
Before making recommendations, I wanted to understand Interplay beyond its website.
I explored its training solutions, target industries, competitive positioning, and business objectives to better understand what made the company valuable and what the website needed to communicate.
Key questions:
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What unique value does Interplay offer compared to competitors?
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What are the company's strongest assets and differentiators?
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What internal and external factors could impact the business?
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Which areas of the business could benefit from further development?
What I learned:
Interplay's key differentiator was its approach to technical training. By combining immersive VR simulations, interactive 3D experiences, and online courses, it offered a way for businesses and educational institutions to provide practical, hands-on training in a controlled environment.
Its ability to serve different industries and audiences was another important strength. However, this also meant the website needed to communicate a broad range of solutions without overwhelming visitors.
Understanding these strengths and challenges helped me recognize what the website needed to communicate more effectively.
Understanding the Users
Interplay has three main audience groups: Enterprise, Small Business, and Education. My goal was to better understand the people within these groups, what challenges they faced, what they were looking for, and what would influence their decision to use Interplay.
How I approached the research
To build a more complete picture of these audiences, I gathered insights from several different sources:
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UX Audit: Evaluated the website through the eyes of a potential user, looking at how easily visitors could understand the offering, find relevant information, and identify the right solution.
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User Interview: Spoke with a potential customer familiar with the skilled trades industry to gain a first-hand perspective on training challenges, expectations, and decision-making.
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Case Study Research: Reviewed numerous industry case studies to understand the challenges organizations faced, how they approached workforce training, and what solutions they were looking for.
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Sales Call Analysis: Reviewed recorded Gong calls between Interplay's sales team and prospective customers. This gave me insight into the questions prospects asked, the challenges they brought up, their concerns, and what they needed to know before making a decision.
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Lucky Orange: Observed visitor behavior on the existing website to identify areas of confusion and understand how people interacted with the content and navigation.
UX Audit
I began by reviewing Interplay's existing homepage through the eyes of a first-time visitor. Rather than looking at it only from a visual perspective, I evaluated whether the content was answering the questions a potential customer would have when arriving at the site.
I used my colleague Shaul's established homepage best practices as a framework, considering six key questions:
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Who is this for?
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What benefit does the company provide?
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How does the product or service help me?
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What credentials or past success demonstrate its value?
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Who else has used the service?
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Who is behind the company?
This helped me look beyond the appearance of the homepage and assess whether it was communicating the right information, in the right order, to the right audience.
"Hard to read with a video in the background!
What is this video accomplishing?"
"Need more motivation to book a demo.
Product tour is not helpful when the user doesnt know what there getting a tour of"
"This title does not allude to a list"
"Why are the
subheadings attached?"
My Recommendations
Based on the audit, I outlined several principles to guide the homepage improvements:
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Gear content toward the needs of the audience.
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Establish a more purposeful content hierarchy.
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Use more specific, benefit-focused headlines.
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Give every section a clear heading and purpose.
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Make calls to action meaningful and relevant to the next step.
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Use spacing more intentionally.
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Minimize unnecessary or overly specific icons.
User Interview
​To gain a first-hand understanding of the challenges, goals, and needs of people in the skilled trades, I conducted an interview with someone familiar with HVAC, plumbing, and refrigeration.
I carefully structured the questions to be open-ended and neutral, avoiding leading questions or assumptions. I wanted to give the interviewee room to share their experiences in their own words, allowing me to uncover genuine challenges, motivations, and expectations rather than guide them toward a particular answer.
Key Interview Takeaways
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Challenges: Traditional education can be expensive and time-consuming, and there is often a gap between practical skills and competency.
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Goals: Reduce costs and risk while improving employee retention and longevity.
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Needs: Consistent, controlled training modules and practical technical training to develop and retain skilled workers.
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Website Expectations: Visitors want to understand what the platform offers, see what the VR experience looks like, explore relevant training, and understand the investment before committing.
How this informed the project:
The findings helped inform decisions around the website's navigation, page content, and calls to action, ensuring visitors could find the information they needed to evaluate Interplay.
A Research Challenge
One of the challenges was that Interplay was not comfortable with us interviewing its existing customers. Rather than let that limit the research, I explored an alternative and interviewed a potential customer who was not yet a client.
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Interestingly, this person had already been in contact with Interplay and had participated in an initial conversation with the company, but had not signed up. This gave us a valuable perspective from someone who was familiar with the offering but was still evaluating it.
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Although the client continued to decline additional interviews, I was able to build on this conversation through case studies, recorded sales calls, and behavioral research. Bringing these sources together allowed me to develop a deeper understanding of the three audiences and create personas based on their distinct challenges, goals, and needs.
Personas
After gathering insights from case studies, sales calls, website behavior, and the user interview, I brought the research together to identify the common challenges, goals, and needs across Interplay's three primary audiences.
Although all three audiences were looking for better training solutions, their motivations and priorities differed. I organized these findings into three audience profiles to better understand what each group needed from Interplay and how the website could address those needs.
01
02
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Competitive Analysis
This was an important part of your research because Interplay Learning offers a relatively complex product that serves several different audiences.
I explored competing platforms as well as websites outside the direct industry that did a good job of communicating multiple services to different types
of customers.
What I wanted to understand
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How do other platforms explain complex products and services?
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How do they communicate their value proposition?
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How do they organize information for different audiences?
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How do they guide visitors toward the right solution?
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What makes their navigation and page structure easy to follow?
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How do they establish credibility and build trust?​
Research Synthesis
Synthesis & Recommendations
After bringing together the website evaluation, business research, audience insights, competitive analysis, and interview findings, we identified several opportunities to improve the experience.
01
​Communicate the value more clearly
Help visitors quickly understand what Interplay offers, how its training works, and why it is valuable.​
03
Simplify the global navigation
Reduce clutter, reorganize information into meaningful categories, and establish a clearer navigation hierarchy.
05
​Build trust and demonstrate value
Use product demonstrations, social proof, and benefit-focused messaging to address customer questions and build confidence.
02
Create clearer audience pathways
Make it easier for Enterprise, Small Business, and Education visitors to identify the solutions relevant to them.​
04
Improve content hierarchy
Prioritize important information, introduce clearer headlines, and make the website easier to scan and understand.
06
Improve calls to action
Make the next steps more visible, consistent, and relevant to the visitor's needs.
Project Goals
Problem
The homepage lacked a clear explanation of Interplay's offering and benefits. The navigation was cluttered with too many options, making it difficult for visitors to find relevant training information and identify the right solution for their needs.
Goal
Create a clearer, more intuitive website experience that communicates Interplay's value, guides visitors to the right solutions, and encourages them to take the next step.
Wireframes & Final Website
From Research to Wireframes
With a clearer understanding of the business, its audiences, and the existing website challenges, we moved into developing the proposed experience.
Site Map
One of the biggest areas of focus was restructuring the global navigation.
The original navigation contained too many options and lacked a clear hierarchy, making it difficult for visitors to find relevant information.
We worked on:
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Reducing and consolidating navigation options.
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Grouping related content into clearer categories.
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Organizing information into more intuitive dropdowns.
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Separating pathways for Enterprise, Small Business, and Education.
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Restructuring the overall navigation hierarchy.
The goal was to create a cleaner, more organized experience that made information easier to discover.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
I created low-fidelity wireframes for the homepage and the main landing page for each audience.
The wireframes explored:
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A clearer homepage structure and value proposition.
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Improved content hierarchy and section organization.
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Dedicated pathways for different audience groups.
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More intentional placement of information and calls to action.
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A more intuitive overall user journey.
These wireframes translated the research and recommendations into a proposed website structure before moving into the visual design stage.
In the end these wireframes became the foundation for the final website. The layouts and structure were carried through into the finished design, with visual styling and color added during implementation.
Prototype Frames
Key Features
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View data on all activities
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Look at applicant profiles and filter them by keywords
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Create, upload and track job postings
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Communicate with applicants and prospect
(See image and corresponding numbers)
My Dashboard
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Created shortcuts to accomplish tasks like (a) posting a job or (b) viewing new applicants
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Included customizable key metrics according to a date range, candidates, and jobs.
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Established how to track and manage a job post.
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Designed a way to (a) view applicants and (b) move them along in their process
My Jobs
1a
1b
02
03
4b
4a
Next Steps
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Review the Remaining Pages
Ensure the rest of the website has clear, consistent content that answers visitors' questions. -
Test Before Launch
Have users complete common tasks using the wireframes, gather feedback, and make adjustments. -
Measure & Improve After Launch
Track traffic, engagement, and conversions. Use usability testing to identify further improvements.
Takeaways
Looking back on this project, there are a few things I learned that I would carry into future projects.
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Knowing when to pivot
We advocated for conducting more user interviews, but ultimately, the client wasn't comfortable moving forward with them. This taught me that while it's important to advocate for the research you believe a project needs, there are times when you have to adapt. Instead of getting stuck on what wasn't possible, I learned to find other ways to gather insights and keep the project moving.
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Setting expectations from the start
Working through a marketing agency between the client and the design team taught me how important clear communication is. I would establish expectations early, clarify exactly what the client needs, and explain my process and planned deliverables from the beginning.
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Clarifying how designs will be used
I initially created low-fidelity wireframes to communicate the proposed structure and layout. I didn't realize they would become the foundation for the live website. In future projects, I would clarify how wireframes will be used, what level of detail is expected, and how the handoff will work before getting started.