Duration

2 months (2023)

Tools

Figma (Design, Figjam), Balsamiq, Notion, Github, Paper

The challenge

The content model - pathways, campaigns, quests, tutorials looked tidy on a whiteboard. Under the hood, there were hidden relationships, messy edge cases, and content developers who were hacking their way through the prototype just to get things out the door. The system made sense to the people who built it. Not the people using it.

Context

The admin portal is the backbone of Learn & Earn. It's where all content gets created, managed, and repurposed - from modular pathways with nested child content to campaigns that transform into tutorials. Getting this right wasn't optional.

The solution

We built an admin portal that actually matched how content developers think about their work. Modular structure, clear content states, intuitive workflows, and a system that could handle complexity without making the people using it carry that complexity themselves.

In this case study

Pulling the system apart first

Making the backend feel like it has a brain

Two structures, one language

Prioritising what moves the needle

What landed

Learn & Earn Component Library

Pulling the system apart first

We started by mapping everything: pathways, campaigns, quests, tutorials, how they connected, where things broke. I also ran interviews with the content developers who'd been managing things manually, sometimes workarounding their way through the prototype just to publish a campaign on time. Their feedback was blunt: the system was built around internal logic, not actual use.

The original prototype we inherited — used as a starting point to identify key pain points and restructure the app.