UI design proposals
Learning-experience artifacts
High-fidelity prototypes
Interaction-pattern library
Experience
Learn through patient situations
Students move from clinical content to application and feedback without leaving the lesson.
Designing Pearson Interactive Nursing
I led the lesson model and Patient Encounter experience for a platform that brought instruction, practice, and assessment into one patient-centered flow.
My contribution
Led the lesson model and Patient Encounter
I defined the lesson structure and core case-study interaction, then co-built the pattern library with two UX designers.
Delivery scale
673 lessons across six courses
One shared system used by more than 120 authors and subject-matter experts.
Background
Rebuilding a nursing eText around the patient
Pearson’s nursing eTexts were organized like books: students read in one place, practiced in another, and completed assessments somewhere else. Pearson Interactive Nursing (PIN) brought those tasks into a single lesson built around patient situations. The goal was to help students find what they needed quickly, then apply it in context.
Deliverables
Role
Lead UX/LX Designer — owned the lesson model, Patient Encounter, research synthesis, and prototype direction; co-created the pattern library with two UX designers.
Timeline
16 months · Spring 2026 pilot completed
Industry
Education technology
"How do we design lessons that leave students able to reason through a clinical situation, when our own data says they open the platform mainly to retrieve answers?"
Impact at a glance
One UX system scaled across 673 lessons
The pattern library supported 161 modules across six nursing courses and gave more than 120 authors and subject-matter experts a shared way to build.
120+
authors and subject-matter experts used the shared system
95.3%
found lessons approachable and easy to follow (n=43)
93%
said Patient Encounters put learning in context (n=43)
Exploratory Research
Students used the previous platform less like a textbook and more like a reference tool.
Pearson surveyed 981 nursing students across 31 courses and interviewed 12 instructors. I analyzed the findings and wrote the supplementary research report that guided the design team.
Sample Size
981
STUDENTS
31
COURSES
12
INSTRUCTORS
What the research changed
Five findings shaped the product direction. Each one led to a specific design implication.
10 of 12
instructors preferred to assign homework digitally
Design implication
A digital-first experience
29%
of students said the existing platform was easy to use and access
Design implication
Improve usability
11 of 12
instructors emphasized a patient-centered approach to teaching
Design implication
Use real patient cases
65%
of students used Pearson eLearning to search for answers or clarify questions
Design implication
Support quick reference
83%
of students reported completing assigned readings
Design implication
Maintain engagement
Ideation & Design
A shared toolkit for more than 120 authors
Three decisions organized the work: center each lesson on a patient situation, keep instruction, practice, and feedback in one flow, and give authors reusable patterns instead of page-by-page layouts. Over three months, experience mapping, concept testing, and co-creation sessions turned those decisions into the lesson model and interaction library used across the program.
Personas
These two research-based archetypes captured a shared constraint: learners studied in short sessions between clinical hours, family obligations, and work. That pushed us toward resumable progress, focused screens, and feedback that stayed inside the lesson.
Two research-based learner archetypes used to align the production team.
Design System
Three UX designers, including me, built the design system. With 673 lessons across six courses, a pattern had to exist for the edge cases as well as the common ones, or authors would invent their own. The counts below are what shipped in the library.
A simplified view of the visual language and component library.
42
Type styles
450
Clinical icons
32
3D illustration icons
58
Flexible UI blocks
9
Assessment types
25
Interactive lesson patterns
Designing interactions around how students learn
Two rules guided every interaction: keep each screen focused on one manageable task, and pair unfamiliar clinical concepts with a useful visual. Other learning theories shaped individual components, but these rules kept the pattern library consistent.
Examples of in-lesson interactions shaped by cognitive-load and dual-coding principles.
Infographics
PIN infographics cut the traditional poster-style infographic down to one idea per tile, sized to sit inside a lesson rather than replace one. Each tile carries a title, an image, and a short explanation, so related elements sit together and a set of ideas reads as comparable units instead of a block of prose. Pairing short text with a supporting visual keeps the learner's effort on the concept rather than on the layout.
Shipped infographic tiles, each focused on one clinical concept. Open full-size.
Patient Encounters (Case Studies)
Research put nursing case studies at the center of the experience, so I spent the most design time on Patient Encounters: the component that carries a case and keeps the learner working through it. Patient Encounters break a case into patient-relevant screens and convert dense clinical detail into interactive formats. Low-stakes questions attached to each screen require the learner to apply what they just read, and return feedback in place.
Patient Encounter sequence showing how a clinical case unfolds across focused screens. Open full-size.
Prototyping
A prototype with two audiences: learners and authors
The first high-fidelity lesson began as a proof of concept for students and faculty. It quickly became something else: the clearest way to show authors how an interactive lesson differed from eText prose. Manuscripts improved once authors could work from a functioning example instead of documentation alone.
Three screens from the first high-fidelity reference lesson.
Prototype Testing
The patient-centered direction worked. Loading and navigation did not.
Testing with 15 nursing students and five instructors supported the core concept, but exposed two practical problems: slow loading and controls that were difficult to find.
Loading performance
13 of 15
Students found the prototype frustratingly slow
Slow screens interrupted the lesson and made the prototype feel harder to use.
Recommended response
Measure page weight and load time with engineering, compress or lazy-load nonessential media, and provide clear loading feedback.
Navigation discoverability
10 of 15
Students could not tell where to go next
Unclear controls contributed to incomplete lessons.
Recommended response
Keep Next and Back controls persistent, pair icons with text labels, and show skipped questions before submission.
Case studies
5 of 5
Instructors backed the patient-centered approach
Faculty confirmed that the case-study design emphasized patient-centered learning.
Recommended response
Keep Patient Encounters as the core case-study pattern.
Design experience
14 of 15
Students preferred PIN’s presentation to the eText
Students preferred the new presentation to the eText and print textbooks they had used previously.
Recommended response
Keep the core experience digital while preserving options for printable summaries, offline access, and flexible note-taking.
Image presentation
11 of 15
Students said the visuals helped them learn
Students said the images and interactions helped with recognition and memorization.
Recommended response
Prioritize visuals that explain a concept; remove images that only decorate the page.
Product Delivery
One design system carried six courses to release
Every lesson across six nursing courses was produced from the shared pattern library, giving students a consistent interface and authors a constrained way to build. The completed system was validated in a Spring 2026 classroom pilot.
161
COURSE
Modules
Modules
673
INTERACTIVE
lessons
lessons
Prototype walkthrough and three screens from the shipped product.
Classroom Pilot
An independent pilot tested the decisions I owned
Spring 2026 pilot: 45 students and 12 instructors. Valid response counts varied by question and are shown with each result. Unless noted, findings reflect self-reported perceptions rather than observed behavior.
Content clarity
95.3%
41 of 43 students found lessons approachable and easy to follow
The lesson structure and segmentation were working.
Patient context
93%
40 of 43 students said Patient Encounters put learning in context
The central patient-first design decision held up in the classroom.
Engagement
93%
40 of 43 students said the lesson design held their attention
Self-reported agreement; attention was not tracked behaviorally.
Supporting results
Four additional findings from the same pilot add context to the primary results.
Media balance
90.7%
39 of 43 students said the media mix felt balanced
Perceived retention
90.9%
40 of 44 students felt they retained more than with a static textbook
Ease of use
82.5%
33 of 40 students said the courseware was easy to use
Instructor view
90%
9 of 10 instructors said Patient Encounters contextualized learning
What remained difficult
Strong feedback did not eliminate every obstacle to completing a lesson. Two issues should shape the next design cycle.
Completion navigation
Learners could not easily return to skipped questions
Students struggled to locate unanswered questions before submitting a lesson.
Next step
Mark skipped questions in the lesson navigation and provide a review screen before submission.
Digital-only learning
Some students still needed flexibility beyond the screen
Although most participants preferred the digital experience, 12 of 44 students (27.3%) were uncomfortable replacing print materials completely.
Next step
Keep the core experience digital while testing printable summaries, offline access, and flexible note-taking.
Reflection
What I would do differently on a program this size
The 16-month program led to a design leadership role for me at Pearson. Looking back, I would change two things.
The prototype became the authoring team’s clearest specification
Documentation did not move manuscript quality. A working lesson did. On the next program I would build the reference lesson before writing the pattern documentation and treat the prototype as an authoring tool from the first week.
Consistency was an authoring constraint before it was a student benefit
673 lessons stayed coherent because authors had fewer choices. The patterns that held were the ones that made the wrong layout difficult to build. The patterns that relied on authors reading guidance drifted.
