Kaplan Site Re-Design
2022 | UX Design
Making meaningful digital experiences more accessible to students, professional, businesses, and universities.
Kaplan is a global education provider that helps individuals achieve career and educational goals, as well as provides educational and training services to colleges, universities, and businesses. After the 2020 formation of Kaplan North America, there were 80 websites under their ownership. Kaplan sensed this ecosystem could benefit from streamlining the online customer experience and reducing management complexity. We set out to redesign their current product system and site experience, focusing on templates and modules that will positively push Kaplan and it’s sub-brands forward.
My role involved developing of a cohesive design system, ensuring consistency across their educational platforms. I conducted a competitive analysis, an entire site audit of 30+ sites. I also generated wireframes and interactive prototypes, collaborating closely with the team to support the restructuring of the user interface. Additionally, I authored detailed design documentation for smooth handoff to developers.
Kaplan's existing design lacked consistency and accessibility across its educational platforms, which hindered the user experience for both students and educators. The interface was not fully optimized for different devices, and users were struggling to navigate the content intuitively. Kaplan needed a scalable design system to streamline the experience, improve usability, and ensure consistency across all touchpoints.
We developed a modular design system that provided a structured yet flexible framework to meet the needs of various pages across Kaplan’s platforms, ensuring consistency and ease of maintenance.
We simplified the navigation by organizing the primary menu by audience and the secondary menu by content categories. This approach clearly communicates the user types Kaplan serves and allows users to easily self-select into an experience tailored to their interests, reducing the clicks needed to find relevant content.
We redesigned the mobile experience to ensure touch-friendly interactions, faster load times, and an overall more streamlined experience. This improved conversion rates by making key actions, such as course sign-ups and purchases, more accessible and user-friendly.
We optimized the product purchase flows by simplifying the checkout process and adding clear calls to action, which improved the user experience and increased conversion rates.
Through the development of a scalable design system, restructuring of the navigation, mobile-first optimization, and accessibility enhancements, the Kaplan redesign not only improved usability and content discoverability but also provided a modernized platform that supports both high-intent and exploratory users. These solutions helped Kaplan better serve its diverse audience while driving increased engagement and conversions.