CASE STUDY

UNIverse - education app to expand your knowledge

You can almost say "This is how apps were designed before AI", which brings creativity, personality and craft to product design.
product design mobile app universe
  • Case study
  • UX
  • UI
  • Product strategy
  • Mobile app
  • Figma
  • Figma Slides
Three high-fidelity UNIverse screens in a dark space theme: two Explore feed cards and the Topics screen with planets for Biology and Art.

About the project

UNIverse is a B2C educational app that helps improve general knowledge through fun, engaging, bite-sized modules.

The app is for individuals who want to casually expand their understanding of topics like history, science, art or technology.

Part 1: UI design task. Part 2: strategy, how to measure success and improve adoption.

Part 1

UI design

Before designing, clarify the assumptions

  • Who is the target group? Age, gender, activities, limitations.
  • What’s the strategy of the product?
  • What are the problems to solve?
  • If it’s paid, why would users pay for it?
  • What is the business goal of the app? Free, paid, or marketing another product?
  • Is there a preferred style or design system in place?

Competitor analysis

Competitors to inspire and do better:

  • WikiTok
  • Mindsnap
  • Nerdish
  • Deepstash
  • Duomly

It’s also good to understand how mindless-scrolling platforms work: Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and others.

Screenshots of two competitor learning apps with the WikiTok, Mindsnap, Nerdish and Duomly logos.

Requirements

MVP requirements

  1. Quick access to the “Today’s Challenge” module
  2. Learning streaks or achievements
  3. Navigation to explore different categories (History, Science, etc.)
  4. Daily quizzes based on last week’s knowledge, plus a leaderboard for engagement, competition and gamification

Other ideas

  • Searching for specific topics
  • Randomized topics for exploration
  • Statistics on topics touched, articles saved and more
  • Push notifications and daily reminders
  • Saving, starring or googling an interesting topic
  • UI that creates ambience: a main theme that treats it more like a game, to make learning fun
Hand-drawn wireframe of the home screen with Daily goal and Quiz buttons, a stacked article card, and bottom navigation.

Home screen explorations

Ten hand-drawn home screen sketches exploring card stacks, category grids, a podium and daily challenge placements.

Lo-fi designs

Four grayscale lo-fi screens: two home screen variants with a card stack and two topics screen variants.

Home screen (left) and topics (right).

Moodboard

  • Universityas topics and knowledge
  • Verseas content and writing
  • Universeas a wide, deep space

Topics as planets that you discover and explore. Targeting mature adults, with colour choices that keep it engaging and creative.

Moodboard: pastel planet illustrations, colour swatches for backgrounds, main and accents, and two reference app screens.

How the design engages users and drives exploration

Explore

  • Daily challenge

    Easy access encourages a daily visit, improves your ranking and boosts competition.

    Also see: Zeigarnik Effect

  • Get started in no time

    Just like highly addictive apps such as Instagram, you land straight on the task that keeps you engaged.

UNIverse Explore screen: greeting, likes and streak counters, a daily challenge progress bar, an article card about Vincent van Gogh, and bottom navigation.

  • Prominent day streak

    The streak helps build a habit of checking the app daily, and the favourites library helps you create the perfect collection.

  • Infinite scroll

    A feed that mixes your favourite topics with AI-suggested ones based on your preferences.

  • Gamification

    Topic exploration, quizzes and ranking drive competition and a sense of urgency to get better.

Topics

  • Quick access to topics

    An easy way to expand your topics, with a preview of your current favourites.

  • Smart topic order

    Topics are ordered by relevance, based on your saved topics and favourite articles.

UNIverse Topics screen: your topics chips for Art and History, search, and planets for Biology and Art on a dotted orbit.

  • Convenient search

    A quick way to find a specific topic or niche.

  • Animated planets

    Watching a planet reveals its inside, encouraging you to explore the topic.

    Progressive disclosure Sketches of a planet revealing its inside

  • Mobile interactivity

    As you scroll, the view expands so you see more and explore faster.

Part 2

Strategy

How to measure success and improve adoption.

Strategic question

20%of users

The app has recently introduced a new feature that lets users customize their learning paths. However, data shows that only 20% of users interact with it. As a product designer, the role is to increase adoption of the feature.

Understand the problem

  • Gather feedback through NPS and star ratings
  • Analyse tracking data in tools like Hotjar or GA4
  • Talk to customers through interviews, emails and surveys
  • Check whether it was promoted: email marketing, social media, a changelog?
  • Find out how many users are actually aware the feature was released
  • What’s the drop rate? At what point do users drop off?

Depending on the answers, there are a few steps to enhance awareness, adoption and engagement of the users.

Enhancing the home screen

  • Smart-suggest customizable paths after the user has explored a few topics
  • Show an overlay introducing the feature on the next visit for awareness
  • Expand “Quizzes” with learning paths to add it to the navigation
  • Bring learning paths onto the home screen if it’s one of the key features
  • Let users view their friends’ learning paths for social proof
Lo-fi home screen with a card suggesting a learning path, a checklist of benefits, a Build my path button and a Remind me later link.

Additional design or strategy

  • Add learning paths as “Today’s Challenge”
  • Gamify the experience with “Build and complete your custom path” challenges
  • Suggest learning path templates to speed up the process
  • Boost the user’s ranking after they customize a learning path (+ EXP)
  • Allow sharing paths with friends, or publishing them
  • Send push notifications on mobile
Two lo-fi screens: a +100 EXP daily challenge pop-up with a Build my path button, and a Quizzes tab with Custom learning challenges and Your paths.

Measure the success

  • Drop rate of users using the feature, before and after the changes
  • Number of users who create or modify a learning path over time
  • Percentage of users who create their first learning path after the changes
  • Average time spent creating a customized learning path
  • Retention of users with learning paths compared to those without
  • Feedback through star ratings, NPS and surveys
  • Completion rate of customized learning paths compared to default paths

Target percentages can be set as specific numbers, depending on the customer base and other metrics.

Please be aware

The process for this project was sped up on purpose. In a real-life scenario it would require assumption clarification, a broader brief, and testing during and after discovery.

Next steps of the design

  • Interactions and animations
  • Prototyping (can be done for lo-fi)
  • Usability testing and A/B testing
  • Iterating
  • Defining metrics and data tracking
  • And many more
Gdansk, Poland
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