EdTech: Blended Learning Platform

Company

Authentica is a premium B2B distributor working with high-end salons in a low-accessibility market. After 20 years offline, the company decided to go digital. This project is the second step on the way to Authentica's ecosystem.

Brief

The brief changed a couple of times during the creation of the platform. In reality it was four products fighting for the same page. Marketing wanted a lead engine for offline and online events. Owners wanted a shortcut to value — to figure out fast which brands and services would work in their salon. The business wanted to open a new direction for solo professionals, who had never been a client segment.

User stories

I started with user stories and interviews for each role: salon owners, managers, professionals. Each of their main jobs (JTBD framework) needed its own space on the platform. So we split the platform into three connected accounts: a Business Account for salon owners, a Personal Account for individual professionals, solo or part of a salon. And an Admin Panel was a separate product for sales and support on Authentica's side.

Modular courses

The hardest design problem was the course itself. There were 50 courses of very different shapes, from a two-hour intro to a multi-day certification. A single rigid template would kill the brand. I designed a modular layout system: a shared kit of sections — a program section, galleries, videos, images at multiple heights, headers, and text blocks. All of this was part of the Admin Panel, so a course could be done in no time by the marketing manager or a graphic designer. The Graphic Design department composes each course according to the brand mood and visuals, and the Admin Panel keeps everything editable.

Sidebar problem

The course sidebar was a case study in compacting the information. It had to expose format, city, availability, tutors, dates, discounts, waiting list, prerequisite completion, and a link to the Personal Account for purchased courses. Of course, it also had to be easy and fast to use. We designed and tested it multiple times before getting the final result. It has one column with clear typographic hierarchy and a lot of logic that hides the complexity of this project from the eyes of the users.

Webinars as experiments

Realtime Webinars were built explicitly as a hypothesis-testing surface. We didn't know which formats would generate business leads, so we designed the webinar flow to make experiments cheap: same registration, same reminders, same post-event follow-up, different content. The strongest format was the product-line launch webinar, held exclusively for current clients — in some cohorts it converted up to 90% of attendees into new contracts. Other formats underperformed and were retired.

Business and Personal Account

Separating Business and Personal accounts was an interesting and unusual task for me. It was less a visual task than a task of creating an experience. For instance: creating an invitation system for stylists and business owners so that more people would join by invite. Or creating roles and assigning zones of visibility for business users and solo professionals — what each of them sees and can do. The Business Account is interesting in itself. This is where the owners and managers can see the education status of their team, manage access rights and invitations, browse education available to their salon, and pull the data they need to run internal training.

Results

The platform launched to a 9/10 NPS among Authentica clients within 3 months. It opened a new direction for the company — solo professionals, a segment Authentica had never reached before. Up to 5% of business leads from educational events now close the deal, and engagement and satisfaction grew across both B2B and B2C audiences. Authentica Academy became the second step toward the company's digital ecosystem.