English E-learning Course & Platform

Background

This project was for Reallyenglish, a widely used English e-learning service in Japan. The platform provides structured online English courses tailored to learners at different proficiency levels, used by both individuals and corporate clients.

The redesign project had two key objectives:

1. Enhance learning effectiveness through richer, more interactive content.

2. Revamp the UI/UX to improve usability, accessibility, and visual appeal across desktop and mobile devices.

I worked closely with the content strategy team to visualize and deliver improvements in both content and product experience. As the only designer in the company, I led the entire design process, from strategy to execution.

Due to unforeseen development delays and internal resourcing challenges, I also took on product management responsibilities, defining the implementation roadmap and setting up agile practices to facilitate smoother progress.

My Responsibilities

• Define the project scope and align stakeholders

• Redesign the information architecture based on a complex legacy backend system

• Unify the user experience across desktop and mobile platforms

• Improve usability for learners and administrators

• Design a new visual style, maintain a reusable UI component system

• Collaborate with the content team to reimagine the learning activity formats

• Manage the product development roadmap and coordinate with engineers

• Establish agile processes to ensure iterative development and regular feedback loops

Project Objectives

1. Content Enrichment

The content team wanted to make lessons more engaging, with richer media and interactive formats. I co-developed prototypes for:

• Drag-and-drop sentence reordering tasks

• Pronunciation practice exercises

• Responsive grammar/listening/reading modules

Each activity type was designed to be intuitive and visually engaging, while also technically feasible for LMS integration.

2. UI/UX Redesign

The old interface was outdated and inconsistent across platforms. I proposed a new IA and visual design system with the following improvements:

• Clearer navigation and course structure

• Responsive layouts for seamless use on desktop, tablet, and mobile

• Simplified progress tracking

• A unified design language with modular components for scalability

Process & Deliverables

• Conducted a usability audit of the legacy platform

• Defined core user flows: onboarding, lesson access, test completion, and progress review

• Created wireframes and high-fidelity mockups

• Developed a cross-platform UI kit and design system

• Wrote and prioritized the product backlog for implementation

Challenges

• The backend structure was rigid and required compromises in some user flows.

• Limited development resources led to slow progress, which I helped mitigate by implementing tighter cross-functional collaboration.

• As both designer and PM, I had to balance design quality with technical feasibility and delivery constraints.

Outcome & Impact

• A refreshed and unified learning interface that improved navigation, clarity, and visual appeal

• A modernized learning experience with interactive and mobile-friendly activities

• A clear and scalable design system that engineers could reuse across modules

• Improved learner satisfaction and reduced support requests (qualitative feedback from client institutions)

While development was rolled out in phases, the newly designed system laid a strong foundation for long-term product evolution and content expansion.

Reflection

This project was a significant step in my career, not only in UI/UX design but also in product ownership. Taking initiative beyond my designer role helped drive the project forward and strengthen alignment between design, engineering, and content strategy.

Great design starts with understanding user needs, but real impact happens when you also help teams deliver it, step by step.