Anyone Mak E It Into Industry Using Cgma Art

Designed and developed a virtual classroom platform

Even earlier the pandemic, the team from CG Master Academy recognized the business potential and impact of a superior virtual learning environment. Discover how we helped them unlock this potential and become the leading provider of online digital fine art education, which they are today.

Mission

Computer Graphics Chief Academy (CGMA) is a provider of digital art education for the games, movie, and animation industries. They pride themselves on their ability to have as instructors artists with years of experience working for many of the major studios.

The CGMA team came to us with a demand to innovate cardinal changes to their cadre product offering — a virtual classroom platform. Having already worked with them earlier on the CGSociety project, we were excited: one of the best eastward-learning projects saw u.s. every bit a long-term outsourcing partner for another project.

Challenge

Equally an due east-learning company evolves, information technology may often outgrow its initial nature. Yous tin start your business with a website built with some gratis open-source solution, but as y'all expand and add custom functions, it may go difficult to support and maintain, too cumbersome to develop, less error-tolerant, and hard to manage, with every new feature taking more time and generating more bugs. That's exactly what happened to the client when they faced the fact: this e-learning web platform's prepare-made CMS lacked prerequisites for further development.

Another problem was a low level of date. It was difficult to realize eastward-learning business potential when, after finishing their class, a student had no further reason to visit the website, no stimulus to return and enroll in a new form. The client decided to brand their web platform more socially-oriented and similar in the organisation-respect to brick-and-mortar universities, to enhance the experience for existing artists and attract new ones and make it their key feature and the footing for standing out from a contest.

To transform the one-time platform into a new, more user-friendly entity would improve serve e-learning acolytes, instructors, and members of the squad and become a much more loftier-value concern asset, information technology needed a redesign and foundation made with a totally different and superior engineering stack and a totally new level of customization opportunities. So our primary objectives were to make educational processes more user-friendly, amend communication, and the direction of educational materials.

The piece of work on the new e-learning spider web platform commenced in early 2018.

Procedure

We had before us a programme for a platform consisting of 3 distinct portals based on a user function: Student portal, Teacher Portal, and Admin portal. Such a large due east-learning project needed to be approached methodically. Cheers to our experience of developing larger-calibration platforms, community sites, and marketplaces, our team was able to build a comfortable procedure for both the client and us and was able to produce the expected outcome.

We broke this eastward-learning project down into several major phases which in turn got divided into sprints and stories. We met with the client once a week to discuss the condition of the projection, providing them with a comprehensive hours breakdown, so they would be able to see exactly what we've been working on. This tested and proven outsourcing arroyo helps u.s.a. provide our remote services every bit smoothly as possible and stay on fourth dimension, as the feature of this projection was the client setting upward strict deadlines because they depended on the educational curriculum.

Design

The starting time thing nosotros did was to inquiry the flow of the sometime website to identify weak spots and how to deal with them. Having studied our client'southward project and requirements, we ended: those were a severe lack of clear navigation and guidance, problems with the e-learning brand positioning, and issues with content strategy. Nosotros focused on making the new educational web platform intuitive, memorable, and easy-to-use for all past tackling their common pain points. To exercise this, nosotros needed to innovate a number of changes and basically change the whole user interaction process.

During the research, we came upwardly with a new navigation system — more straightforward, simple, and predictable to better represent the information architecture and user intent.

We besides streamlined the user journey and made it more than seamless and effortless by guiding an eastward-learning enthusiast along their path towards a goal with personal notifications and an bookish calendar to help them feel more motivated.

Simultaneously, we worked on the extensive projection specification document with a detailed description of the e-learning project which nosotros created in shut collaboration with the client.

Then came the phase of creating style scapes — mood boards to make sure our vision was in line with what our B2C customer wanted. Equally one of the previous problems was the lack of consistency between the educational platform and other company resources like the marketing website, we ensured the new design was in agreement with the brand e-learning identity and resonated with the audience. Seeing every bit the target audience is young and with CGMA being mostly near creating graphics for games and movies, nosotros wanted to brand the platform blueprint reminiscent of the current global digital and art culture. Our idea was to create something that doesn't feel imposing as it sometimes happens with e-learning web platforms, but conveys the vibe of the culture and community.

For the web platform we chose a dark background with strong contrasts of the brand and additional colors.

Based on the research and documentation, nosotros proceeded to brand the paradigm. It was a very collaborative outsourcing process with us making it little by petty, discussing each bit with the client. The clickable prototype was then tested by the team and the client.

Next, we created the design organisation to ensure blueprint integrity. A good pattern system helps make the design process more efficient, improves collaboration of designers and developers, saves a lot of designers' time, and hence, ‌makes the whole design and development process more cost-effective.

Development

As was mentioned earlier, the one-time Drupal-based web platform was not able to provide enough opportunities for growth and it was hard and expensive to try to construct something new over it than to build a completely new foundation with Ruby on Rails. By doing it, we were able to address the issue of scalability, speed up the website, improve its security, and fulfill other needs with RoR'southward built-in tools too every bit other alternatives.

Information migration from sometime databases to a new structure

One of the main development outsourcing challenges was transferring the data (everything there was since the erstwhile website's inception in 2010) to the new eastward-learning spider web platform with a different architecture. Calculation to the necessity to run into the time limit, it involved substantial efforts on the developers' office to successfully migrate all the content and user data to ensure it was rubber and secure and no data was lost during the transition process.

Integration with Discord

When the outsourcing journey had just started, the client wanted their new educational web platform to have an east-learning forum, just, every bit we felt a live conversation would exist a solution to provide superior communication while complying with the project'southward objectives, this was a suggestion accepted by the client. Nosotros decided to integrate the Discord chat and chose it due to its functionalities and because well-nigh of the target audience were already using it, so information technology was a really smooth transition. Moreover, nosotros fabricated information technology so a person could use the chat even with no Discord business relationship. It'due south at present possible to communicate over a chosen grade, share and talk over homework with your instructors and peers, and by and large discuss whatever topic of option, whether you are on the website or inside the Discord app. We besides created the custom UI for the e-learning chat and made apply of Discord'south storage capacity.

Integration with Zoom

Video conferencing became part of our lives quite a while ago. We enriched the east-learning process by providing an opportunity to ask the educators more detailed questions during the events like live sessions and Q&A sessions. Educators on the web platform were already using Zoom for creating the classroom environment, but earlier they managed it by manually sending Zoom links to users via email. Nosotros simplified this process by integrating Zoom into the due east-learning spider web platform to allow the creation and update of meetings and events. To aid students and instructors keep track of their activities, we added a user-friendly notification system that informs a user about any events happening on the website that concern them. Nosotros also added the ability to watch the earlier videos along with the recorded chats, which allows students to have admission to the learning materials at whatever time without leaving the platform.

Convenient video management system

We made it possible to manage the educational video materials more conveniently by adding the opportunity to load, optimize, and store video files from various sources similar Zoom, Youtube, and Vimeo in the organisation and manage and edit the entire courses, as well as additional texts and other materials. The uploaded videos are automatically processed for unlike screen resolutions so due east-learning clients can work with lectures even with a weak internet connection. We are currently working on a system for the automated generation of subtitles to ease the learning process for users with lesser linguistic communication skills.

Integration with PayPal

Nosotros have integrated PayPal to CGMA payment methods for 1-time purchases and purchases by installments allowing east-learning users to budget their courses. They tin can also pay for their courses with a card via PayPal's PayFlow. We've also redesigned the outsourced check-out procedure making information technology more than straightforward, and added the notification feature that helps to manage payments for both students and administrators.

Additional automation

We added the automatic PDF generation functionality to receipts and certificates, introduced the Freshdesk helpdesk solution for support tickets, and integrated the SalesForce customer human relationship management solution and ActiveCampaign to e-mail marketing automation.

Technology stack

Front-finish:
React, Next.js, styled-components, react-query, HTML5, Sass.

Back-stop:
Ruby on Rails, Sidekiq, Docker, AWS.

Database:
MySQL, PostgreSQL.

Additional libraries and services:
Chat integration — Discord, Main payment system — PayPal, Video conferencing — Zoom, Embedded videos — Zoom video/Youtube/Vimeo APIs, E-mail notifications — SendGrid, Communications protocol — WebSockets, Customers support — Freshdesk, Spider web automation — Playwright.

Key features

Live conversation
Student/instructor and student/student communication at whatever time with the possibility of collaboration.

Homework assignments
Checking, evaluating, and communicating over weekly assignments with a reminder feature.

Video conferencing
To finer connect educators with the audience and host events and meetings safely.

Video playlist direction
Administrators create, edit, and optimize video playlists.

PayPal integration
One-fourth dimension purchases and installment plans.

Business analytics
Instant customer records access and collaboration.

Support ticket system
An efficient customer service performance.

Custom PDFs
Automatic receipts and certificates generated in the form of PDFs.

A go-to place to learn digital art

CGMA proved to exist ane of the largest projects nosotros've taken on so far. We've been happy to apply our skills and expertise forth the mode to help CGMA reach their goals. Today, it's a total-fledged busy online e-learning academy with thousands of users and dozens of simultaneous manufacture-focused courses providing long-term benefits and chore offers at ‌major companies like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft. Its key features include personalized skillful feedback and a collaborative classroom surroundings — something that was not possible earlier they reached the states.

Cheers to open communication with this e-learning project, we ever found a suitable solution. Every idea the B2C customer had imagined, we had in mind, designers wanted to introduce, and developers were able to interpret into reality — everything coalesced into 1 beautiful eastward-learning project — toll-constructive, convenient, and marketable.

We launched the updated projection in May 2020 with remarkably positive feedback from users of all categories. Users bask the new social features participating in classroom activities even after finishing their courses. The e-learning platform is now robust, takes fewer employees to manage, is open to new opportunities and features, and with a far more than engaging educational process.

Nosotros keep to provide support and maintenance in the grade of an ongoing partnership.

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Source: https://shakuro.com/works/cgma/