Smashing Conference
UX Research & Design Team Lead
smashingconf.com
My Role

Team Lead of UX Design team of 4 responsible for all project from identifying problem to solutions.
Smashing Magazine, a global digital publishing platform with 2.5M monthly users, aimed to scale its online educational offerings—specifically UX training workshops and video courses. I led a cross-functional UX team to identify user and business pain points, generate insights, and rapidly iterate toward a more effective e-commerce platform.
PRODUCT
BUSINESS GOALS
Increase sales of video courses and training packages for B2B and B2C customers
01
Attract large companies to purchase educational products.
02
Discover captivating and interactive formats to entice individuals to register for workshops.
03
Enhance the educational platform's quality.
04
  • Understand user behavior and purchase motivators for both individual learners and corporate teams.
  • Identify barriers to conversion on the current SmashingConf education platform.
  • Benchmark against competitive platforms such as NNGroup and Awwwards Academy
HIGH-LEVEL RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
RESEARCH
Purchase decisions, expectations, pain points
DEEP INTERVIEW WITH USERS TO DETERMINE:
Business constraints, product vision, organizational goals
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEWS TO DEFINE:
Features, pricing models, and messaging across 4 competitors.
COMPETITOR ASSESSMENT FOR EVALUATION:
New user engagement and onboarding flow
DIARY STUDIES
358 responses to identify trends (e.g., 72% needed clearer workshop descriptions).
QUANTITATIVE STUDIES:
Key workflows including purchase, account setup, and checkout
TESTING WITH 6 USERS FOR:
PERSONAS
RESULTS
Low Information Density: Course and instructor pages lacked credibility-building details (e.g., bios, affiliations, reviews).
We thoroughly explore and analyze our research findings to pinpoint the most critical needs, pain points, and habits of our target users.
01
Poor UI Heuristics: Critical action buttons were misidentified or missed altogether.

08
Workshops cannot be purchased on behalf of a third party to ensure that all course information reaches the workshop participant directly.
02
Unclear Differentiation: Users couldn’t distinguish between UX workshops and masterclasses.
04
Confusing Checkout: Required irrelevant information, leading to drop-offs.
03
05
Workshop descriptions are unclear—users don’t know if features like live feedback or recordings are included, causing confusion and drop-off.
B2B Purchases Blocked: Users could not purchase workshops for team members or third parties.
07
Payment Friction: 65% of users abandoned checkout due to unclear pricing tiers and lack of third-party gifting options.


09
Users need an account to track their trainings and access certificates, but this feature is currently missing.
06
SOLUTIONS
Homepage restructuring






Homepage Restructuring
Redesigned the homepage to prioritize course discovery and clarity.
Header & Navigation Optimization
Simplified the menu and improved navigation to reduce cognitive load.
Enhanced Masterclass Cards
Introduced visually scannable cards with key info (level, duration, format).
Clean & Intuitive UI
Applied a minimalist design system to improve usability and trust.
Built-in Chat Support (Email-Based)
Added real-time support to assist users during decision-making and onboarding.
The user experience has become easier thanks to:
  • Structuring information on the workshop page;
  • Structural distribution of information on the platform and simplified authorization.
  • Optimized workshop purchase flow;
Streamlined the workshop purchase flow by removing the mandatory list of other masterclasses during checkout, reducing friction and improving conversion.
List of lecturers. Lecturer's page.
  • Optimization of the structure of the list of lecturers on the page of lecturers. Adding lecturer attributes.
  • Adding important informational attributes and user information to the lecturer page.
08
Added account function
  • Added a tab with a list of all workshops on the account page. Certificates.
  • Added account attributes.
LEARNINGS
As a team we committed to launch scrappy solutions to get fast learnings and iterate. We were constantly tracking data and interviewing users to see which experiments were successful, and which failed.
RESEARCH IMPACT
Business Team
  • Increased sales conversions by 18% through optimized workshop descriptions and transparent pricing structures
  • Reduced support tickets by 32% after implementing persona-based UI improvements
  • Shortened average sales cycle by 6.2 days by addressing key customer concerns earlier in the process
  • Generated $287,500 in incremental B2B revenue through new bulk purchase functionality

UX Team
  • Reduced discovery phase timelines (from 7 to 4 weeks) through reusable research frameworks
  • Improved task completion rates from 61.3% to 89.7% on key user flows
  • Decreased average workshop selection time from 3.4 minutes to 1.8 minutes

Product Team
  • Prioritized roadmap based on 358 validated user responses and 6 usability testing sessions
  • Reduced feature backlog by 37 items by deprioritizing low-impact functionality
  • Increased feature adoption rate for new account dashboard to 78.3% within first 3 months

Engineering Team
  • Reduced checkout flow API calls by 28.6% through optimized user pathways
  • Improved system uptime from 99.1% to 99.7% through better error handling