Team: Project Management
Role: Sr UX/UI Designer
CFT: Marketing, Sales, Security/Compliance, Curriculum, Tech, Engineering, and Rev Ops
Timeline: 2022-2024 | 0 → 1 platform design
Active NDA: In depth case study during Interviews
Collaborated with company cross-functional teams to research, gain feedback and iterate current & new platform features.
Organized documentation within PRDs, Figma and Jira, championing clarity and efficiency in team workflows.
Developed, tested, and optimized user flows improving menus, drop downs, containers, and settings.
Leveraged behavioral data from Hotjar and Chameleon to identify user pain points and prioritize actionable improvements.
Participated in live & remote administrator/educator focus groups to gain insights that directly influenced digital tool updates.
Designed a unified visual language for both teacher & student platforms to drive engagement to create an intuitive experience.
Streamlined educator workflows with clear information hierarchy and concise, purposeful layouts, reducing task completion time.
Reduced user effort and improved navigation, leading WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance validated with third-party QA testing.
STEMscopes Science’s legacy 2.0 platform was not WCAG 2.1AA accessible, intuitive navigation, and effective engagement for K-12 users. It created barriers for educators with complicated navigation, overwhelming amount of clicks to reach content and no online student engagement.
The platform design was dated and needed a whole new user experience that spoke to education users
STEMscopes users needed faster, more intuitive access to content and assignments
With 1,000 + content items in STEMscopes, new updates & features were needed to streamline navigation and reduced clicks
With a new adoption approaching, offline access and LMS integrations (Canvas, Google Classroom) were critical
WCAG 2.1AA compliance was necessary to bring the aging platform up to date and meet the needs of K-12 users
The teacher curriculum and resource section needed a new CMS to handle the robust & complex STEMscopes content
The homepage was in need of a new purpose; creating a dashboard was high priority for the new platform
Developed detailed user personas and mapped information architecture to clarify user roles and content structure.
Charted user journeys and optimized flows, revealing key interaction points and informing layout enhancements.
Employed card sorting and top-down analysis to refine site navigation, aligning it with user mental models.
Led targeted focus groups, conducted user interviews, and distributed surveys to surface both broad trends and in-depth insights.
Executed contextual inquiries and heuristic evaluations to benchmark usability and identify quick wins and deeper systemic issues.
Conducted usability and A/B tests to validate design decisions and guide evidence-based iteration.
Maintained an observational perspective within real-world district settings, ensuring the design addressed authentic user scenarios and educator workflows.
Holistic Experience Visualization:
Mapped learner touch points across the platform, enabling a clear view of the user journey at each stage and rapidly pinpointing where targeted improvements drive the greatest impact.
Elevated Engagement and Alignment:
Identified core engagement barriers and addressed user pain points through direct mapping of stakeholder roles and interactions ensuring cross-functional alignment among educators, students, and administrators for a cohesive educational experience.
Insight-Driven Enhancements:
Collected and synthesized qualitative feedback and quantitative data, leveraging these insights for evidence-based decision making that directly improved platform effectiveness and user satisfaction at critical stages.
Continuous Technological Evaluation:
Consistently assessed the efficacy of platform tools in the learning environment, ensuring that technology facilitated not hindered the learner experience and supported measurable outcomes.
Personalization at Scale:
Designed journey maps with customizable pathways to address unique learner profiles, goals, and preferences fostering personalized learning and ensuring solutions could be measured against institutional and individual success metrics.
Research to Design Steps:
Referenced prior focus & discussion group research data to analyze pain points
Held discussions with CFT to decipher which new feature needed to build & by when based on state curriculum & school district needs
Prioritized the road map for all new features based on information above and developed PRDs to reflect feature needs vs nice to have's
Worked alongside the product owner to develop low fidelity then mid fidelity wireframes to match PRD specifications
All hands on deck with CFT to review the PRD vs mid fidelity wireframes to iterate and think through choices
Gained focus group feedback to determine any pain points or items that teachers felt needed improvement.
Feasibility Reviews on mid fidelity wireframes with engineers to discuss design, tech, QA, compliance or accessibility concerns
Review of high fidelity wireframes for final product owner approval
Delivered a redesigned platform with education-friendly layouts, streamlined navigation, and WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.
Created wireframes and iterative prototypes, integrating direct feedback from internal teams and focus groups for continuous improvement.
Designed a customizable teacher dashboard, responsive mobile/offline mode, and integrations with major LMS systems (Canvas, Google Classroom, Schoology).
Enhanced educator workflows by reducing friction content, menus, dashboards, planners, and resources are now accessible with fewer clicks.
Implemented blended learning support and tailored interfaces by grade band, increasing both engagement and accessibility.
Positive User Reception:
Customers praised the new platform’s ease of use, clean design, and interactive features. Teachers specifically valued access to robust training resources and quick responsiveness to their feedback. The intuitive organization of content empowered educators to plan lessons more efficiently and confidently.
Actionable Insights for Enhancement:
Feedback identified key improvement opportunities. Teachers recommended simplifying the assignment process further, reducing unnecessary navigation steps, and expanding onboarding tutorials to better bridge user interface gaps. These insights inform the next stage of product optimizations for a smoother educator experience.
Iterative UX Support & Expansion:
Ongoing UX enhancements will ensure the platform continues to adapt as it expands to additional U.S. states. Leveraging continuous user data and feedback, the new digital experience will remain focused on meeting customer needs as a trusted, widely used STEM resource in the EdTech market.
Continuous updates to this case study will occur as new STEMscopes research and data are released in 2025 and beyond: https://acceleratelearning.com/research/