Café Learn
Café Learn was developing a new web application for college students and educators to manage courses online. They needed a clean and simple visual system that worked within existing technical constraints. I designed page templates to serve as a foundation for the rest of the platform and created a custom icon set to complement the interface.
Café Learn
Client: Café Learn
(via Söoryen Technologies)
Role: UI Designer
Year: 2015
SCOPE
The project focused on designing reusable templates and original icons for the platform. My goal was to create a visually intuitive experience that supported both educators and students, while aligning with the technical and branding needs of the development team.
PROCESS
In lean design environments, UI work doesn’t always begin with a wireframe. For Café Learn, I worked with limited materials: sample pages from their current application, Excel-based data sets, and competitor research. Through regular remote meetings with the producer, I single-handedly created layouts and icons under a tight timeline. One featured page—Time on Task: Educator’s View—allowed professors to quickly assess class-wide and individual student progress, helping them identify students at risk early enough to intervene.
RESULT
The Café Learn application launched with a faculty bootcamp in partnership with California State University. Since then, it has supported instructors in designing and delivering affordable, high-impact learning experiences. Today, Café Learn continues to center student success through intuitive digital tools.
SUMMARY
Working with Café Learn was a smooth and rewarding experience, even though we never met in person. The producer was surprised and delighted by the custom icons I created—he had assumed they were stock assets due to our time and budget constraints. All icons were original designs made specifically for Café Learn.
I’m proud to have contributed to higher education as a designer. As someone who continues to take college courses and uses online portals regularly, this project felt both familiar and personal. As a parent of a digital-native child whose homework is mostly online, designing a dashboard for educators felt especially meaningful.
