Sarka Kortanova - Product Designer & Strategist

Back to home

The European Academy of Education — From UX Analysis to Full Redesign

Brought in for a UX analysis. Found a school with no real online presence, two completely different audiences, and a website that looked twenty-five years old.

Ended up turning it into a full redesign — and owning it from brief to launch.

Brought in for a UX analysis. Found a school with no real online presence, two completely different audiences, and a website that looked twenty-five years old.

Ended up turning it into a full redesign — and owning it from brief to launch.

CONTEXT

EDTECH · ONLINE EDUCATION PLATFORM ·
CZECH REPUBLIC · 2023–2024

SCOPE

STRATEGY · RESEARCH · IA · UX DESIGN · TEAM MANAGEMENT ·
10 MONTHS

STRATEGY · RESEARCH · IA · UX DESIGN ·
TEAM MANAGEMENT · 10 MONTHS

Table of Contents

01 — The brief

02 — What I saw

03 — I didn't guess. I researched.

04 — What I found

05 — The moment

06 — The team I managed

07 — Beyond the brief

08 — What changed

09 — What this kind of work requires

The brief

They came to me for a UX analysis. The postgraduate courses weren't selling. Find out why.

One look at the website and I knew the answer went much further than that.

The teacher platform was too complicated. Teachers weren't using it the way it was designed. Find what's broken. Fix it.

What I saw

An online school with a website that looked twenty-five years old.

It didn't need to be analysed. It needed to be rebuilt.

I didn't guess. I researched.

How I approached it

The redesign was agreed. Now I needed to understand who I was designing for — and why the postgraduate courses weren't converting.

GA, Hotjar, CRM records with every lead and paying student.

A survey sent to all current students — 34 responded.

4 recorded interviews.

Competitor analysis across 10 Czech providers.

Public data from the Czech Statistical Office on adult learning motivations.

A 36-page report consolidating everything.

Without these, Foxino could never be a planning tool — regardless of how the interface looked.

What I found

Two audiences who needed completely different things. And a platform that wasn't working for either of them.

The audience ONE · THE VOCATIONAL STUDENT

96.8% of EA's actual students. Average age 38. Working full time. They need the certificate to keep their job — EA is the only place offering it online. They're not choosing the brand. They're choosing the format.

The audience TWO · THE POSTGRADUATE STUDENT

BBA, MBA, and similar. Motivated by career growth and personal development. Comparing EA against 10+ competitors on credibility, accreditation, and practical value. Landing on a site that didn't look credible. And leaving.

the general findings

High bounce rates across postgraduate pages. Sessions that went nowhere. The vocational courses were converting in spite of the website, not because of it. EA had a monopoly. People had no other option.

What it meant

Two audiences. One institution.

Each one with completely different needs — different motivations, different fears, different reasons to be there.

It wasn't just that the website was outdated. It wasn't built for either of the people using it.

Moving on

EA's vision was clear. One institution — vocational certifications, partial qualifications, BBA, MBA, postgraduate degrees — all under one brand.

There were real UX problems too. Unclear IA. Button logic that confused teachers. Animations that obscured content. I documented them and addressed them.

I had a feeling even then that someone considering an MBA might hesitate when they see the same school certifying electricians. But the vision hadn't been tested. It wasn't my place to make that call.

There were real UX problems too. Unclear IA. Button logic that confused teachers. Animations that obscured content. I documented them and addressed them.

So I held the tension, and designed the best possible version of what they wanted to be.

What it actually took

I built a platform that bridged both realities

I managed the team from brief to launch

I went beyond the brief — and came back a year later

I mapped what was pulling the team off course

01 I built a platform that bridged both realities

The strategy

The architecture had two jobs — working together.

Overview and home pages: orient and move. Clear. Neutral. Navigational. Get anyone to the right place fast. No assumptions about who's reading.

Course landing pages: speak directly. Before the redesign, these didn't exist. Every student — electrician or MBA candidate — landed in the same place.

I introduced dedicated landing pages for each course. The electrician's page spoke to electricians. The MBA page spoke to someone weighing a career change. Same school. Land on your course — and it feels like it was built for you.

Without these, Foxino could never be a planning tool — regardless of how the interface looked.

The conversion logic

The landing pages weren't just a UX decision. They were a conversion strategy.

I recommended that paid ads send people directly to the relevant course page — not the homepage. Someone clicking an ad for an electrician certification already knows what they want. Make the next step obvious.

Without these, Foxino could never be a planning tool — regardless of how the interface looked.

02 I managed the team from brief to launch

01 I diagnosed the strategic gap.

The design

60+ pages of wireframes across the full site.

Navigation was the hardest problem — a large course catalogue spanning vocational certifications, partial qualifications, BBA, MBA, and postgraduate programmes. 4 to 5 variants designed and tested before landing on a structure that held.

I ran discovery research with five teachers across five different schools. The goal wasn't to

validate what the team already believed. It was to understand how teachers actually work.

The content

One of the biggest challenges was getting all the factual information about each study field out of the client's heads and into a format that could go on the site. Over 10 meetings recorded and analysed. Each study field documented, written, and structured for its specific audience.

What I found was consistent across all five interviews. Teachers don't plan by lesson. They plan by term, by topic, by class level. They recycle materials from previous years. They use digital tools as boosters — not as the backbone of their planning.

The team

I managed the UI designer and the developer throughout. I held the brief. Challenged decisions that drifted from it. Made calls when opinions diverged. Worked directly with the two owners at every stage.

And I stayed — not just until handover, but until the product was live.

03 I went beyond the brief

Beyond the scope

When I spotted a gap in their marketing — no reliable way to generate leads — I connected them with a performance agency I trusted.

The third problem was the one nobody had named at all. It wasn't just what the team was building. It was how they were making decisions.

That wasn't in the scope.

It was just the right thing to do for the business.

The third problem was the one nobody had named at all. It wasn't just what the team was building. It was how they were making decisions.

What changed

A year later, I sat with them again. The postgraduate programmes were still underperforming.

The tension I'd sensed at the start was now showing up in the numbers.

Maybe these are two different brands, not one. – The conversation that hadn't been ready before was now the one they wanted to have.

What this kind of work
requires.

What this kind of work requires.

The brief is never the whole story

EA came to me for a UX analysis. What they needed was a full redesign, a research-backed strategy, and someone to manage the whole thing end to end. Those are very different things.

What it actually takes

Seeing the gap between what a client asks for and what they actually need — and having the confidence to say so — is where this kind of work starts. Staying until it's done is where it ends.

My thinking is the product. Figma is how it becomes real.

Contact

Let's work together

Sometimes the problem isn't what it looks like. If you're stuck, I can help you figure out what's actually going on — and what to do about it.

Contact

Let's work together

Sometimes the problem isn't what it looks like. If you're stuck, I can help you figure out what's actually going on — and what to do about it.

sarka Kortanova

SARKA KORTANOVA

my work

design approach

Get in Touch