The UX Challenge: Scaling Coursera’s Design for Growth  

With rapid expansion over six years, Coursera’s design ecosystem became fragmented and inconsistent across verticals. The need for fast iteration cycles led to a disjointed user experience, with no shared vision, principles, or measurable criteria across teams. The lack of brand guidelines, a unified content style guide, and a scalable design system resulted in high design and technical debt, making it difficult to maintain quality and consistency.

   

The UX Solution

To unify Coursera’s design approach and create a scalable, consistent experience, I led initiatives that:

• Built & Led a Cross-Functional Design Team – Hired top talent with expertise in design systems, accessibility, and internationalization to establish a solid foundation.
• Established a Unified Design Vision – Created design principles, system foundations, and measurable objectives to align all verticals.
• Developed a Comprehensive Design System – Partnered with product, brand, and content design teams to create a flexible, scalable system that ensures cohesion across all experiences.
• Implemented an Alignment Framework – Introduced a collaborative approach to ensure the design system is community-driven and adaptable across teams.
• Optimized Tools & Workflows – Standardized Jira, Confluence, Storybook, and Figma libraries to streamline collaboration and maintain efficiency.

 

Outcome & Impact

• Launch of Coursera Design System 1.0 – A fully documented, internationalization-ready (RTL) design system that enables teams to scale.
• Unified Brand & UX Across All Experiences – Ongoing releases of brand initiatives across the platform, reinforcing consistency and identity.
• One Centralized Code Repository – Eliminating redundancy and improving engineering efficiency.
• Figma Library & Shared Design Assets – Ensuring cross-team accessibility and adoption.
• Improved Accessibility & Global Reach – Integrated accessibility and internationalization guidelines into the system.
• Community-Driven Design Alignment – A framework that allows teams to contribute while maintaining cohesion and flexibility.

By establishing a scalable design system and fostering collaboration, we transformed Coursera’s design ecosystem from fragmented to unified, creating a more efficient, accessible, and globally adaptable user experience.