academyEX
Future-focused postgraduate learning for change-makers, leaders, and innovators.
TL;DR
academyEX is a postgraduate institute offering Master’s programmes, short courses, and micro-credentials across topics like education, change leadership, sustainability, and emerging technologies.
Over the past few years, I’ve led UX and UI design across almost every touchpoint—working across our website, LMS, CMS, brand and internal platforms to make things simpler, more inclusive, and easier to scale.
There was already some great work in place, but like many growing organisations, we needed to tidy up, reduce friction, and make sure our experiences worked for all the different audiences we support.
Project Duration
3.5 years - academyEX
2022 - ongoing
My Role
Brand Design
UX Design
UI Design
LMS Design
Tools
The challenge(s).
There were a few key challenges that kept popping up:
Navigation was confusing, with overlapping links and content that didn’t quite match user intent
Our existing design system looked great, but struggled with accessibility—think low contrast, moving elements without controls, and dense visual layers
Our LMS had never gone through usability testing, and users were running into issues we hadn’t yet explored
We didn’t have a way for international education agents to submit and manage student applications—everything was happening over email, WhatsApp, WeChat or Slack.
These issues weren’t just visual—they affected trust, usability, internal workflows, and the experience of thousands of users, from learners and staff to external partners.
User-Centered
Design Process.
Design Process.
My approach at academyEX always starts with empathy—for our learners, our staff, and the teams managing content behind the scenes.
Whether I’m mapping navigation, designing a new portal, or refining our LMS, I focus on simplifying complexity and making things feel approachable. I use research (when I can get it), stakeholder input, and real-world constraints to guide decisions.
I’m always asking: how can this be clearer, easier, more human? From accessibility audits to modular design systems, my work is grounded in making sure the people using our platforms—on any device, at any stage—feel supported, not overwhelmed.
Things I’ve worked on:
🌐 Global Navigation Redesign
We found through data (heatmaps and student feedback) that the navigation on the academyEX website buried information - making it hard to find auxiliary pages, and increasing the number of clicks needed to find what they needed.
Through rounds of usability testing and card sorting, I developed a global navigation system that surfaced information higher on the site. It also allowed for our varying and rapidly expanding B2B offerings to live alongside B2C offerings - setting us up for growth.
Now the global nav allows users to find what they’re looking for more quickly, as well as giving us more real estate to promote events, blogs, new products, and other news within the navigation itself.
🌍 International Agent Portal
This was a big one. I designed a secure, user-friendly portal for our international education agents—giving them a way to submit applications on behalf of students, track progress, and manage documentation all in one place.
The portal integrates with Hubspot so both agents and our marketing team can see exactly where each application sits in the pipeline. I adapted our B2C flow into something that worked at scale for partners handling multiple applicants at once.
Desktop and mobile screens of the agent portal. Agents could add students, create applications and track progress from a simple dashboard.
🧪 LMS Usability Testing
I ran usability testing on our learning platform to better understand what was working—and what wasn’t—for our current students. While not all changes have rolled out yet, the research helped us prioritise learner pain points and inform future planning.
Based on the user feedback, I created affinity maps and a rainbow spreadsheet to analyse the data. There were several critical areas for improvement, including adding a course calendar, reducing the number of clicks needed to access course content, and finding assessment details.
Key Learnings.
✅ What We Delivered:
A more intuitive and structured global navigation now live on the site
Built a modular, accessible design system to unify design across web and learning environments
Migrated content infrastructure from Contentful to Statamic, streamlining content authoring for non-technical teams
Grew brand consistency by redesigning UI components, standardising visual assets, and supporting cross-team alignment
A first-ever agent portal that has brought clarity and professionalism to our international enrolment process
Conducted end-to-end usability testing on LMS, identifying key UX friction points (though many were deprioritised by leadership)
📊 Results:
35% increase in website conversion rate after UX-led optimisations to navigation, course pages, and user flows
30% reduction in drop-off rates through improved sign-up flow UX and user journey mapping
90% Net Promoter Score (NPS) for the newly launched Agent Portal — co-designed for ease of use and aligned to international user needs
What I learned
Designing across a whole ecosystem is as much about systems thinking as it is about screens and buttons. A lot of this work wasn’t flashy—but it made a real difference to both users and internal teams.
I learned how to gently evolve a design system without losing the soul of the brand, how to balance the needs of very different user groups, and how to design tools that reduce complexity rather than add to it. I also got to work across multiple content and application systems—which gave me a broader view of how user experience can support teams and operations as much as it supports end users.
And maybe most importantly, I saw that great design isn’t always about launching new things. Sometimes, it’s about clearing the path for everyone else to move faster and more confidently.