Udacity

B2B Learner Retention Redesign

Overview

Udacity is an online tech education platform for consumers, businesses, and governments.
‍To improve B2B retention, I increased learner engagement with a redesigned enrollment flow, classroom, and dashboard, boosting activity, enrollment, and completion rates while reducing support needs.

Role

Senior Product Designer

Platform

Web, mobile

Contributions

Product & design strategy • User research & synthesis • UX, UI, & interaction design • Prototyping & user testing

Problem

Research uncovered key barriers to learner engagement and retention.
Users felt burned out, unmotivated, and often stopped after a single program. Many didn’t see the value of continued learning. Across the product experience, I identified specific pain points:

  • Dashboard & Enrollment: Lacked progress cues, visual engagement, and motivational elements
  • Classroom: Difficult to navigate nested content
  • Catalog: B2B content was hard to find; filtering and program info were limited

Process

Goal: Increase Engagement
I focused on motivating learners, improving usability, and demonstrating clear value—both to learners and to their managers. I worked across teams to align on goals, involve stakeholders, and keep progress tied to impact. I followed a fast, user-centered process:

  • Brainstormed ideas based on research
  • Prototyped the strongest concepts
  • Tested with real users to guide design decisions

Solutions

I tackled key friction points across the user journey, streamlining navigation, surfacing value, and driving engagement through thoughtful UX improvements.

Dashboard Improvements
‍The dashboard was redesigned to better support return visits and highlight learner progress and value. I added mobile support, personalized program recommendations, weekly challenges, knowledge highlights, and clearer ROI indicators.

Increased Weekly Active Learners
Higher enrollment
Fewer helpdesk tickets

Catalog Improvements
I redesigned the catalog to be easier to find and navigate, adding improved filters, multi-account support, and curated collections. The B2C and B2B catalogs were combined to provide consistency and reduce upkeep. I also added a clearer link from the main site to drive more traffic and improve discoverability.

Higher conversion and enrollment
Decreased sign-up time

Product & Enrollment Pages
The catalog now serves both B2C and B2B learners, giving everyone access to the same comprehensive program information. Based on user research, I surfaced the most relevant information and detailed program information, making it easier for users to choose the right program. The enrollment page is now dynamically generated from the product page, allowing learners to see which programs they've started and track their progress directly from the catalog.

Decreased user confusion
Increased enrollment

Product Architecture & Publishing Process
I simplified the site structure by consolidating redundant pages and cleaning up the navigation. This reduced confusion and lowered maintenance overhead. Additionally, the publishing process was overhauled, reducing steps and saving time across teams.

Simpler, more intuitive experience
Reduced technical and design debt
Decreased publishing time by 8–12 hours per page

Classroom Experience
I improved the classroom’s navigation and redesigned the AI interaction model to make tools more discoverable and helpful during learning sessions.

Increased AI usage
Reduced learner confusion
Decreased time to desired content

Additional B2B Designs
I introduced clearer navigation for B2B users, improved onboarding and session visibility, and launched a beta dashboard for ROI reporting. These updates were informed by research and data collected by our cross-functional team.

Improved B2B sales support
Increased program enrollment
increased ROI visibility for clients

Results

The redesign delivered measurable impact for both users and the business while laying the groundwork for future scale. I built a system flexible enough to support multiple verticals and automated key workflows, including product publishing. The site architecture was simplified, the UI upgraded with a new design system, and the experience aligned with brand goals and business strategy.

Increased weekly active learners
Increased program enrollment
Decreased B2B helpdesk tickets
Increased speed to graduation
Saved ~4,000 hours year
Unprompted, positive feedback from users!

More Work

Le Tote

Onboarding UX redesign for iOS and web
Read Case Study