Role
Lead UX Designer
Duration
12 Weeks
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Slack
Team
CEO
2 Developers
February 2023
SaaS Curriculum Platform Redesign
Measured Results
28%
Lifetime Value
30%
Recurring Revenue
60%
Time on Task
SaaS platform redesign to increase usability, stem decreasing LTV & MRR, plus establish brand identity.
Skillz Worldwide is a global martial arts brand that provides age-specific training programs, instructor certifications, and business strategies, integrating child development principles to enhance student growth, engagement, and retention.
As the Lead UX Designer for Skillz Worldwide, I worked closely with the CEO and two developers to redesign their customer-facing curriculum platform. The goal was to create a user-friendly experience that reduced intimidation for new users while still meeting the needs of experienced customers. Through collaboration, prototyping, and user research, I ensured the platform balanced accessibility, functionality, and business objectives.
Context
Overview
The challenge was to revamp a large-scale online curriculum platform with thousands of pages, making it more intuitive while driving customer lifetime value (LTV) and monthly recurring revenue (MRR). The solution focused on implementing an on-brand design system that balanced familiarity with efficiency, streamlining the user journey to reduce friction and enhance overall satisfaction.
My Role
As Lead UX Designer, I focused on improving usability through user interviews and content analysis to streamline navigation. Collaborating with the CEO and developers, I identified key pain points, ensuring the redesign balanced familiarity with efficiency. Using real user feedback, I refined wireframes and prototypes, optimizing accessibility and engagement.
Timeline
Over the three-month timeline, we used website metrics to identify the most popular content, ensuring it remained a priority in the revamped information architecture. Through user interviews, we uncovered key challenges faced by our two largest customer segments—new users and long-term customers—helping us refine the experience to better serve both groups. Collaborating closely with developers, we created designs that not only met business goals but also worked within technical constraints, ensuring a seamless and scalable solution.
Project Brief
SKILLZ began as a straightforward curriculum platform but rapidly evolved into a global leader in children's martial arts, shaping the industry with its innovative, age-specific training programs.
With an abundance of content, new members often felt overwhelmed and struggled with adoption, while long-time users found it increasingly difficult to locate the information they needed.
️ The Challenge: Reduce cognitive overload while retaining the wealth of information & improving task success rates
Our goal was to create a streamlined, user-friendly experience that maintained the depth of content while making it more accessible, ensuring both new and long-term users could easily navigate and engage with the platform.
Design
Overview
After extensive research analyzing website data, Wistia metrics, and user interviews, I identified three key focus areas:
Information Architecture - Surface & prioritize exactly what users are consuming based on behavioral signals.
Streamline & Clarify - Utilized personas and competitive analysis to pinpoint critical user needs and pain points that were essential for success.
Define the Brand - Leverage the power of a Design System to bring a professional appeal and cohesion to the brand.
By focusing on these key areas, we created a more intuitive, user-friendly platform that not only improved navigation and clarity but also strengthened brand consistency, ensuring a seamless experience for both new and long-term users.
User Interview Data & Analysis
Defining the Problems
Now that we identified our target users, it was time to identify what actual problems we are solving for based on what we have learned about our user.
To help define these problems, I used the insights gained from research and my understanding of our personas’ needs to create POV Statements to frame the problem from the user’s perspective. I used these POV Statements to identify How Might We questions which would fuel my process to brainstorm solutions.
Insights, needs and How Might We
Sketching & Ideation
Taking what I’ve learned throughout my process to this point, I started to make decisions on how the content on the new SKILLZ platform would be displayed based on the project goals we want to meet.
Prototype & Testing
Taking the lo-fi wireframe sketches, I digitized them Figme and added just enough information for users to be able to navigate through the pages and complete tasks I would present to them during usability testing. These mid-fidelity wireframes would help my focus on what needed to be improved in terms of the functionality of my design. I also created tablet and mobile versions to make sure that the design is responsive and effective across the different device screens that users would be accessing the website on.
Priority Revision
I performed another review and card sort of all the programs & information. The final design was a mega menu that intuitively categorized the programs into buckets (large left squares) and when active, displayed their contents on the right. Users found this type of menu struck a balance between a reduction in cognitive load and low time on task.
Result
By the metrics
28%
30%
60%
As lead on this redesign, I had the privilege of working as the UI/UX lead and be a liaison with the SKILLZ front end developers. Together we were able to work together and create solutions that were designed well and still within the technical constraints presented by the developers.
Takeaways
🤝 MVP vs perfect
Stakeholders were adamant about getting an MVP to market as fast as possible to capitalize on industry trends. While we were working with solid deadlines I am glad I was able to provide solutions that were thoughtful, informed, and exceeded stakeholder expectations!
🌟 Multi-phase
Because so much of the content needed to be rebranded OR received little to no meaningful engagement; I was able to work with stakeholders to develop a rebranding plan and future update funnel!
