Team: Project Management
Role: Sr UX/UI Designer
CFT: Marketing, Sales, Security/Compliance, Curriculum, Tech, Engineering, and Rev Ops
Timeline: 2022-2024
Active NDA: Will share insights during interviews
Managed and mentored a cross-functional team of designers to deliver a greenfield product from concept to launch, fostering growth and ensuring design consistency.
Organized and documented scalable design systems within Figma and Jira, championing clarity and efficiency in team workflows.
Developed, tested, and optimized user flows improving menus, dropdowns, containers, and settings, which led to a 26% gain in user efficiency.
Leveraged behavioral data from Hotjar and Chameleon to identify user pain points and prioritize actionable improvements.
Led educator-focused UX research, facilitating teacher focus groups; insights directly influenced digital tool updates.
Designed a unified visual language for both teacher and student platforms to drive engagement and create a seamless, intuitive experience.
Streamlined educator workflows by focusing on clear information hierarchy and concise, purposeful layouts, reducing task completion time by 34%.
Reduced user effort and improved navigation, leading WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance validated with third-party QA testing.
STEMscopes Science’s legacy LMS lacked accessibility, intuitive navigation, and engagement for K-12 users and educators. The 2.0 version created barriers for educators trying to align with state-specific curriculum, reducing classroom efficiency and student engagement.
The platform design was dated and needed new user experience and interface 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.
Ran rigorous 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.
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.
Faced scope and timeline constraints from state curriculum adoption cycles; prioritized “must-have” features over “nice-to-have” enhancements to deliver business ROI while meeting user expectations.
Resolved technical and functional CMS limitations by developing a modular design system for future scalability and seamless updates.
Positive User Reception:
54% of 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:
26% of the 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 product will remain laser-focused on meeting customer needs positioning it 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/
