The OLI website hadn’t been updated in over two years, leaving cluttered navigation and disorganized content that overwhelmed even its core audiences—educators, students, and researchers. Many arrived unsure of what OLI actually provided and struggled to locate resources.
Meanwhile, OLI wanted to spotlight its unique strengths in Learning Engineering and research-backed course design. But if users couldn’t easily find or understand that value, the opportunity was lost.
We set out to redesign the site so OLI’s value was immediately clear, easy to navigate, and engaging to explore.
To uncover where users struggled, I combined insights from an existing UX research report with my own heuristic audit. While the report reflected OLI users broadly, I prioritized educators in the redesign since they are the group most critical to OLI’s mission. These inputs revealed three consistent issues:
I synthesized these findings into an empathy map that captured users’ confusion, credibility concerns, and frustrations with navigation.
With this context, I defined the redesign’s north star:
help educators quickly understand how OLI can support their teaching.
I started with the foundation: reorganizing the sitemap. Key sections like Educators, Courses, and Services were elevated to the top level, aligning user needs directly with OLI’s business goals.
Next, I translated the new structure into lo-fi wireframes. My focus was on intuitive layouts: digestible content blocks and strong calls to action guiding educators step by step.
Once the structure felt right, I moved to high-fidelity mockups where I emphasized:
To make the redesign sustainable, I built a design system in Figma. It included scalable typography, spacing guidelines, and reusable components. This ensured consistency across pages and made future updates simpler for the OLI team.
With designs translated into WordPress (a process I led), the new site launched in August 2025. The final design delivered on its promise of clarity and usability:
Clear menus and pathways make it easy for educators to find courses, services, and support.
Content rewritten to answer educators’ top questions about OLI’s offerings.
Prominent calls-to-action now guide users to relevant resources without extra clicks.
A high-contrast palette and structured hierarchy ensure inclusivity, meeting WCAG standards.
The redesign has only recently launched, but the initial response has been overwhelmingly positive. Stakeholders praised how the site finally tells a cohesive story about OLI’s value, with flows that feel natural and purposeful.
The new design makes a content-heavy site feel simple and engaging, improving navigation and reducing overwhelm for our core audience. Stakeholders described it as beautiful, timeless, and easier to maintain, setting the stage for stronger long-term engagement.
I’m now conducting usability testing to collect data on engagement, task completion, and satisfaction. These results will guide future iterations and measure long-term impact.
This project taught me that good design isn’t just about usability—it’s about sustainability. I created a detailed handoff guide so the internal team could update the site independently; their feedback—that it made updates much easier—was a highlight for me.
I also realized the importance of early testing. While I planned post-launch usability studies, I now see how testing the old site first could have uncovered more pain points. Going forward, I’ll always push for research at the very start, not just to validate but to shape the design itself.
