Reframing Udemy’s experience from course catalog to career pathways
Introduction
Udemy functions as both a consumer marketplace and an enterprise subscription platform for online courses focused on job and life skills. Many users arrive seeking guidance for what to learn next to advance in their careers, but the product often fell short in providing this direction and lacked the personalization necessary to understand their goals. This lack of relevance left self-motivated learners struggling to navigate a vast array of content, leading to frustration as they attempt to identify the right skills to learn. As a result, many potential purchases were lost.
My role: Principal Product Designer
Team: Product Manager, Structured Data Architect, ML Engineer, Web Engineer, Marketing Manager
Why it mattered
Focusing on user outcomes to increase customer value and improve market fit across a family of products presented a significant opportunity for the business.
The project initially aimed to feature a collection of courses for popular job titles on the consumer homepage. However, in collaboration with the team, I redefined the project’s scope to leverage the newly developed technical capabilities to guide learners away from transactional actions into crafting their own learning pathways to reach personal career growth goals.
Results
I developed a more effective UX strategy to improve product relevance and unlock business value across the ecosystem by reframing existing resources and capabilities to better meet user needs.
The solution aligned to how our users approach their learning to connect them to the products through their learning goals. This shift not only reduces time to value but also provides compelling reasons for users to return and stay engaged.
Initially focused on improving the consumer marketplace, the project gained traction through research and experimentation, ultimately evolving into a key value-add for paid subscriptions.
The team also introduced our related hackathon project called the Skills Graph, designed to help users explore what skill to learn next and understand how different skills are connected across various career paths.
My approach
Discovery: Cross-functional workshops
I designed a series of workshops to explore opportunities and potential solutions with the extended team. It was crucial for me to foster an inclusive and empathetic culture, drawing on a diverse range of ideas and perspectives. I presented the results with stakeholders to get directional input, and inform them of insights and the team’s next actions.
Learn: Research & experimentation
I conducted and collaboratively synthesized multiple rounds of user research to arrive at what would be most valuable for our learners and hone the value proposition. I first explored learner mental models, then low-fi concepts.
Are people learning for the job they have now, or the job they want to have in the future, both?
How do people approach finding resources for learning? By job title? Field or craft? Career goal? Job level?
How do managers think of their role as a leader vs. their core craft?
How might we approach personalization in a way that can work for anyone?
Explore: Possible solutions
Mapped entry points, journeys, relationships, and user outcomes in flowcharts and low fidelity screens.
Collaborated and worked closely with Data and Content teams to understand near term and longer term feasibility, and plan how to introduce the solutions into the product ecosystem in phases over time.
Plan: Roadmap & how to get started
In partnership with Product Manager, evangelized the project roadmap to the cross-functional leadership team, and showed how we could make it achievable and break it down into phases.
I used low-fi concepts and visualizations in a lean start-up environment to discuss recommendations with stakeholders for how to start, and why, based upon research insights and near-term product feasibility.