Yondur

Overview

During my time at Cognisess, I worked on their app Yondur, a career exploration app that helps students and apprentices follow a tailored career path. My main role was as a frontend developer and UI/UX designer, tasked with redesigning the app's core user flows to improve usability.

Identifying the problem

Due to user research being out of scope for this project, I kept in close contact with the company's customer success manager to identify previously reported user issues, ensuring the redesign wasn't just an aesthetic one, but user-focused.

It became clear that the authentication flow would be my first course of action, not only as the main entry point of the app, but also as an area where users experienced a lot of confusion.

Most users were students invited via email to join their school's workspace, giving that specific email access to pre-assigned features once they completed sign-up. Instead of taking invited users to the registration flow, the email link navigated them to the global authentication page, a single route with tabbed forms for login and registration that always defaulted to the "Log In" state.

A lot of users assumed receiving an invite meant their account was already created, and landing directly on the login page only amplified that confusion.

Solution-ing

I decided that separating login and registration into distinct routes would be the best solution within scope, and a competitive analysis confirmed that separating these routes was the standard approach. The original layout also suffered from low Lighthouse scores for accessibility and performance due to un-optimised imagery. By adopting a cleaner, modern design, I removed unnecessary visuals to reduce cognitive noise and keep users focused on authentication.

When mapping out the registration flow, I noticed the lack of an email verification step, meaning accounts created with misspelled or stolen emails couldn't be recovered, an issue that customer support had previously encountered. I partnered with backend to get the email verification route working, resulting in a more secure authentication system.

Additional scope

Aside from the authentication flow, I designed additional unreleased features including the Career Explorer, profile page, games gallery, and a new home dashboard, with a few snippets featured in promotional materials I created.