Accreda
A personalised career building platform for professional education
Accreda, by Keybridge Global Education, is a digital-first career building platform designed to make aspiring professionals employable and job-ready. It serves both individual learners and enterprise clients through a unified product experience, focused on structured learning, assessment and career progression.
Impact
| Conversion rate | +25% increase through improved user journeys |
| User acquisition | Improved lead generation across D2L and D2B |
| Platform scale | Scalable design system across 10+ screen types |
Traditional education systems fail to translate into real-world employability. Learners had no structured way to progress, validate their skills or see tangible career outcomes from the content they consumed. The market was full of platforms offering courses but none offering a coherent path from learning to being hireable.
User problem
- No structured progression - courses existed in isolation with no clear next step
- Lack of credible skill validation or shareable proof of capability
- Limited visibility into what career outcomes learning would actually produce
System or business problem
- Low differentiation in a crowded EdTech market with similar-looking competitors
- Weak conversion and engagement across both D2L and D2B journeys
- No unified platform experience that served individual learners and enterprise clients without fragmenting into two separate products
The problem wasn't access to learning - it was the lack of structured progression and proof of capability.
Designing for two fundamentally different mental models - an individual learner figuring out their career and an enterprise buyer evaluating ROI for their team - within one product shell, without the platform feeling like it was built for neither.
I led the project end-to-end across research, UX and UI. This included driving discovery workshops, defining product structure and designing high-fidelity experiences across web and mobile. I worked closely with cross-functional stakeholders spanning business, technology and content - often across timezones - and was responsible for translating complex, competing requirements into a cohesive and scalable product experience.
1.Learning journeys lacked continuity
Users entered the system with intent but dropped off due to unclear progression and disconnected content. This highlighted the need for a structured pathway rather than isolated course discovery.
2.Outcomes needed to be visible and credible
Users valued learning only when it translated into tangible outcomes. This led to prioritising validation mechanisms and outcome visibility as core parts of the experience.
3.Dual audiences required a unified system
Both learners and enterprise clients needed to interact with the same system in different ways. The approach focused on creating a flexible structure that supports both without duplicating experiences.
Research revealed a consistent pattern across all user types: high intent at awareness, confusion at discovery, hesitation at decision and disengagement at retention. The drop-off at decision stage was the most critical - users had enough information to be interested but not enough confidence to commit. This single finding shifted the entire product direction and became the lens through which every subsequent design decision was made.
The product direction shifted from a course-first model to a pathway-led structure - a deliberate call to prioritise where users end up over what content they can access. Four design principles anchored the work from this point: Personalisation, Interactivity, Simplicity and Immersiveness. A key structural decision was made here to not split the platform into separate learner and enterprise products, but to use shared IA with distinct dashboard states and contextually relevant content for each audience type.
The final UI system was built around Accreda's brand identity - deep purple and gold as the primary palette, cream secondary tones for breathing room. Playfair Display was chosen for expressive, premium-feeling headings and Manrope for UI clarity across body and functional text. A custom iconography set was designed specifically for the learning ecosystem rather than adapted from a generic library - every icon was built to reinforce the platform's core values across all 10+ screen types.
Career pathways
Structured learning journeys guide users from discovery to mastery by surfacing skills, timelines, and outcomes upfront. This reduces ambiguity and helps users make informed decisions.
FLY - the skill validation system
The FLY (Forever Learning and You) framework introduces assessments and certifications that provide users with credible, shareable proof of their capabilities.
Learner dashboard
Dashboards and tracking systems enable users to visualise growth over time, creating motivation and reinforcing progress through clear feedback loops.
Ecosystem integration
The platform integrates university content, LMS systems, and proprietary tools into a unified experience, ensuring consistency across user journeys.
- Typography: Playfair Display for expressive headings, Manrope for UI and body text - pairing editorial warmth with functional clarity
- Colour: Deep purple and gold primary palette communicating premium and ambition, cream secondary tones for breathing room
- Iconography: Custom icon set designed around the learning ecosystem - not adapted from a generic library
- +25% increase in conversion rate through clearer user journeys and stronger value communication at decision points
- Improved acquisition across learner and enterprise segments
- Platform successfully launched serving both D2L and D2B audiences within a single cohesive experience
- The FLY framework was translated from a business concept into an interactive product experience that meaningfully differentiates Accreda from generic EdTech competitors
The conversion improvement wasn't a single design win - it came from a combination of three changes: shifting navigation from course-based to pathway-led reduced decision fatigue, surfacing credentials and shareable proof earlier in the journey addressed trust gaps at the decision stage, and the FLY growth map gave returning users a reason to stay engaged beyond course completion.
Key decisions I drove
- Shifted from course-based navigation to pathway-led structure for improved clarity and engagement
- Prioritised validation and outcomes over content volume - differentiated from generic EdTech platforms
- Designed for dual audiences within a unified system to avoid fragmented experiences
What I influenced
- Product direction and information architecture across the full platform
- Alignment between business goals (D2B revenue, brand premium positioning) and user experience (clarity, personalisation, confidence at decision stage)
- Cross-functional collaboration across business, content and engineering teams across timezones
I underestimated how much onboarding needed to guide users early in their journey, and relied too heavily on navigation to carry that weight. If revisited, I would introduce a clearer entry-point segmentation for learners and enterprise users to reduce initial friction. This project reinforced the importance of designing systems that balance structure with flexibility, especially when serving multiple user types within a single product.