The Challenge
ECS Academy was growing and the platform itself needed some improvements. Users were struggling to navigate through the courses and user profiles hadn’t enough information for understand who learners were and what they needed. The founders wanted to make learning easier for students while gaining better insights about their audience.
My Role & Approach
I led the UX/UI redesign with two main goals: make navigation smoother and smarter user profiles.
I began by mapping the existing user journey to identify pain points. Then I analyzed other learning platforms, both competitors and ones I've personally used. I also looked for users feedback to understand their needs.
With all that knowledge, I reimagined the user journey and I started with quick wireframes to test different navigation ideas, then developed them into detailed prototypes. I focused on:
- Course discovery: Made browsing easier by adding key details like difficulty level and lesson count upfront.
- Registration: Fixed the process while capturing useful info
- User profiles: Built user profiles that actually give the company insights about their students
- Learning experience: Added text versions of video lessons for accessibility and note-taking, plus downloadable lesson materials to enhance the learning process
What I Took Away
This was my first time designing a project of this kind, so I hit a lot of "how should this work?" moments. Different user states, multiple interaction flows... But I stayed focused on the main goals: navigation and user insights. That clarity kept me from going down rabbit holes.
This project pushed me from reading about UX to actually doing it. I learned how to:
- Balance what the business needs with what users need
- Research competitors in a way that actually influences design decisions
- Think through all the different ways someone might interact with a feature
- Say no to cool ideas that don't solve the core problem