EDTECH
B2B PRODUCT
Redesigning CMS Behind
India's Largest Test Prep Platform
Aakash generates 50M+ content assets annually, yet its core creation tool was not built with user experience in mind. This led to increased turnaround time (TAT) and compromised content quality, impacting 7M students.
I conducted a usability heuristic audit, identified 40+ critical issues, and redesigned the core creation workflows to improve efficiency, consistency, and output quality.
PLATFORM
Dashboard design
DURATION
24 Weeks
MY ROLE
UX Researcher, Product designer
WHAT WE ACHIEVED
optimisation of content workflows in the dashboard
100+
Critical usability blockers resolved while handoff
40%
Reduction in TAT for creating questions and tests
THE PROBLEM
The tool that powers our tests
was the biggest obstacle to making them.
Aakash's internal CMS was the backbone of test content creation, yet it was built for engineers, not faculties. Teams were battling a fragmented, error-prone interface daily, creating invisible quality debt at scale.
No Goal or Wayfinding
Entering 120+ fields for a single paper felt endless. There was no step indicator, no progress feedback, no sense of "almost done", causing abandonment mid-flow and incomplete drafts.
Fragmented Information
Architecture
Mandatory and non mandatory fields, associated topics, and test structure were spread across unlinked tabs. Authors context switched constantly with no sense of overall progress or completion.
No Error Prevention
Required fields failed silently. Authors discovered missing data only after submission, causing re entry loops and lost work. Error messages were absent or appeared at the wrong moment.
UPDATED DESIGN
Move the slider to see previous and updated designs
CONTEXT
A Broken flow in the tool
Ripples to students
Most UX problems affect users directly. This one was different, the users are faculties, department heads. But the people who really pay are students. Bad tooling leads to bad content resulting in low quality questions and delayed exams Understanding this cascade defined every design decision.
7M+
Students downstream
Every piece of test content served to Aakash students is managed through this CMS. A single broken flow ripples to thousands. Quality degradation at the tool level creates compounding errors at scale.
7 Days, 1 Test
Test Generation
Faculties spend 6-8 hours/day in the CMS, yet only 1 test was being generated in a week. Tool friction was not just slowing them down but also leading to irrelevant mapping and abandoned drafts blocking downstream publication
0
UX Iterations Since Launch
A 8 year old system which had never been evaluated through a user lens. Engineers built to spec, not to the mental models of users who'd use it 5 days a week. Accumulated UX debt with zero visibility.
40%
Time lost to friction
Research revealed nearly half of session time went in navigating confusion, re-entering data, recovering from form errors, and reopening tabs to find already entered values
THE CONTENT PIPELINE , AND WHERE IT BREAKS
Syllabus Planning
HOD defines test according to batch, subject, chapter scope
CMS Entry
Faculty creates questions followed by tests juggling through screen and countless fields — breaks here
Test Review
The reviewer has to be informed about reviews and review process is done on printed paper
Error correction
Error connection is slow and tidious. Reviewer suggests changes on printed papers, editor make those changes in CMS.
The Cascading Failure
Validation gaps → incomplete papers published → wrong question-syllabus mapping → students tested on content outside their batch scope. An invisible quality leak with no alert system.
DESIGN PROCESS
Audit first.
Design second.
The single best decision: we didn't open Figma for the first week. A structured heuristic evaluation gave every subsequent design decision an evidence base, not just taste.
01
Heuristic Audit
40+Violations
Severity Mapping
Each violation annotated with screen + heuristic
Severity-scored to build prioritised fix queue
02
Contextual Research
20+ Interviews
Shadowed 2 authors during live paper entry
Mapped flows to find abandonment points
03
IA + State Mapping
Card Sorting
IA design
Card sorting with stakeholders on field grouping.
Individual IA for complex flows
04
Design and Test
Agile
UAT
Designing a master structure and designing individual flows.
Field testing with 45+ faculties at 3+ institutes
VIOLATION MAPPING
40+ violations. Mapped, scored,
and ranked by impact.
Applied across current tool, 6 of 10 heuristics had critical-severity violations. with multiple UX laws failing
System Status
Error Prevention
Flexibility
Consistency
Aesthetic
Aesthetic
Hicks Law
Law of common Region
40+Violations
CRITICAL
Hick's Law - Too many buttons
The design has too many buttons leading to confusion and disruption in workflow.
CRITICAL
Goal Gradient Effect - No sense of progress or completion
56+fields with no sense of progress lead to fatigue. Authors reported more errors in the final third of entry, exactly where Goal Gradient predicts.
CRITICAL
Fitts' Law - Action buried at scroll bottom
Primary action placed at the absolute bottom of a variable length form. On longer papers this required scrolling past 60+ fields making it difficult to trace. This caused frustration and delays
MEDIUM
Product colour - Contrast ratio fail
Master screen table rows and buttons failed for low-vision users and caused eye strain in some cases headache too
Innovaccer Analytics (WIP)
Creating agentic workflow for care managers
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