Overview

MyCourses Reimagined is a strategic product redesign of RIT’s course management system, created to transform a task-heavy academic platform into a more collaborative, intuitive, and engagement-driven learning experience.

Rather than treating MyCourses as a place to simply upload assignments and check grades, I rethought it as a connected learning ecosystem, one that supports peer interaction, reduces friction in academic workflows, and helps students move from passive consumption to active participation.This project reflects how I approach product design at a systems level: identifying behavioral gaps, uncovering workflow friction, and designing scalable solutions that improve both user experience and platform value.

My Role

Product Designer

Research, UX strategy, interaction design, wireframing, UI design, prototyping, and design system thinking

This project highlights my ability to take a complex ecosystem product, identify high-impact opportunity areas, and translate them into a product vision that balances user needs with platform-level value.

Problem

MyCourses plays a central role in students’ academic lives, but the experience felt fragmented and operational rather than supportive.

Students had to navigate across disconnected sections to manage assignments, access resources, track grades, and communicate with peers. Collaboration was limited, course materials lived in isolation from actual tasks, and the platform did little to encourage discussion or peer-to-peer learning.

The result was not just usability friction, but a missed opportunity: a platform used daily by students was functioning as a static repository instead of an active learning product.

Current mycourses screenshots

Opportunity

This redesign explored how a legacy academic platform could evolve into a more modern product experience by addressing three high-value areas:

1. Reduce workflow friction

Students should be able to move through assignments, resources, and deadlines with less cognitive load and fewer clicks.

2. Enable collaborative learning

The platform should support peer interaction around course content, not just formal group projects.

3. Increase engagement through clarity and connectedness

A more intuitive and interactive system can improve how students participate, retain information, and manage coursework.

Business Goals

I defined the redesign around three clear product goals:

• Create a collaborative environment where students can engage with peers directly around shared resources

• Streamline assignment and course workflows by connecting tasks, materials, and progress in one experience

• Modernize the visual and interaction design so the platform feels intuitive, engaging, and easier to use at scale

Design Process

Research

• User Interviews

• Takeaways

Ideation

• User flows

• Low- Fi Wireframes, UI Design

Design prototype

• Hi- Fi Wireframes

• Micro - Interactions

Research

To understand where the current platform was falling short, I focused on student behaviors around coursework, collaboration, and resource usage.

Survey Questions

• How easy is it to collaborate with your peers on assignments or resources in MyCourses?

• Do you feel that MyCourses facilitates meaningful discussions between students on resources shared by faculty (e.g., PDFs, videos, notes)?

• How useful would it be if MyCourses allowed real-time commenting on shared resources (e.g., PDFs, videos) for collaboration?

• Do you feel that the current platform supports peer-to-peer learning (e.g., asking questions, discussing content)?

Insights

Key insights

1. Collaboration was under-supported

Students had limited ways to discuss coursework or shared materials outside of structured group work. Peer learning happened elsewhere, not inside the platform.

2. Resources were disconnected from action

Assignments, files, grades, and reference materials existed in separate areas, forcing students to mentally stitch everything together.

3. The platform created unnecessary friction

Simple tasks like locating submissions, checking requirements, or finding supporting material required too much effort.

4. Students wanted more dynamic learning tools

There was clear interest in features like commenting, discussion around resources, and more interactive learning support built directly into the system.

User Flows

Initial Sketches

Lo-Fi Wireframes

Design System

Final Screens

Outcome

This redesign reframed MyCourses from a conventional LMS into a more collaborative and student-centered product experience.

While the project was academic, the thinking behind it was grounded in real product outcomes: reducing friction, increasing engagement, and creating a system that better supports how students actually learn and work.

More importantly, it demonstrates my ability to approach redesigns not as visual refreshes, but as opportunities to improve behavior, efficiency, and long-term product value.

Product Impact

The MyCourses redesign demonstrates how I think beyond screens and flows to the larger product ecosystem.

By identifying collaboration gaps, simplifying core workflows, and introducing a more connected learning experience, I turned a routine academic platform into a strategic redesign proposal with clear user and business value.

This project reflects the kind of work I want to lead: product experiences that are not only usable and visually strong, but meaningfully better for the people who rely on them every day.