Now You Know
From a video library to a guided learning journey.
Now You Know is a learning product focused on short, practical lifestyle skills.
When I joined the company, the product already had users coming mainly through paid acquisition, but the experience was still closer to a video content library than a guided learning product. Users could watch skill-based videos, but the app did not give them a strong enough reason to keep progressing, complete more skills, or return regularly.
As the only Product Designer, I redesigned the product from V2 to V3 end to end. My work included the main product flows, UX, UI, visual direction, design system, components, states, handoff, and design QA.
The goal was not only to make the app look better. The goal was to create a clearer and more engaging product experience: one with progress, motivation, rewards, practice, and a stronger reason to return.
The problem
The V2 experience was mostly built around watching skill videos. Users could consume the content, but the product did not create a strong learning loop.
There were several related problems:
- The app felt more like a content library than a guided learning journey.
- Users did not have a clear sense of progress, achievement, or reward.
- There was no strong reason to continue after watching the first few videos.
- The experience did not feel personal enough around the user’s selected skill.
- The UI and product structure were not consistent enough, which could make some flows harder to understand.
The team had product signals showing that users were not progressing deeply through the available content. We looked at learning-related metrics such as retention, completion, first skill starts and completions, onboarding completion, and D7 / D30 retention.
I do not have access to all exact numbers today, so I avoid presenting metrics I cannot verify. But the direction was clear: the product needed more than better screens. It needed a stronger product system.
My role
I was the only Product Designer on the project, so my role covered the full V3 redesign process.
I worked on:
- product flows and UX structure;
- UI design and visual direction;
- onboarding, Journey, skill pages, lessons, quizzes, rewards, Guided Practice, games, Now tab, Library, profile, and settings;
- edge cases, empty states, loading states, and interaction states;
- the design system from scratch;
- handoff and collaboration with developers;
- product discussions with founders and stakeholders.
Because the team was small, my role was not limited to screen design. I participated in product discussions, explored different directions, challenged decisions when needed, and helped turn product ideas into usable flows.
Product direction
The main product shift was:
From passive video watching to a guided learning journey.
Instead of opening the app and seeing a flat set of videos, users would now enter a more structured experience. They would choose a skill, start a learning journey, complete lessons, answer short quizzes, receive rewards, and continue into practical guided exercises.
The goal was to connect the main parts of the product into one loop:
Choose → Learn → Reinforce → Feel progress → Practice → Continue
This gave the app a stronger structure and helped make the experience feel more personal, motivating, and complete.
Main learning loop
The most important flow was the first learning loop.
After onboarding, the user selected their first skill and landed on a Journey screen. From there, they could preview the skill, watch a trailer, start the first lesson, complete a short quiz, receive a reward, and continue into Guided Practice.
Guided Practice was originally a product idea from the founders. My role was to turn it into a clear step-by-step flow that helped users move from “I watched this” to “I can actually do this.”
This flow was important because it connected the app’s main value into one clear loop: learning, reinforcement, progress, reward, and practice.
Now You Know could not compete only as a place to watch videos, because users could find free educational content elsewhere. The app needed to create value through structure, guidance, progress, and practice.
Design system
Alongside the redesign, I created the V3 design system from scratch in Figma.
The system included colors, typography, variables, reusable components, variants, states, icons, illustrations, buttons, inputs, cards, modals, and key UI patterns.
The goal was to make the app more consistent and easier to scale. Since the product included many different areas - learning flows, rewards, games, skill pages, profile, Library, and Now tab - the system helped create a more unified product experience.
I also prepared partial handoff notes and specs for developers where needed. The documentation was not fully completed because of startup timelines, but the design system gave the team a stronger foundation for future features and iterations.
Post-launch iterations
After the V3 release, we continued iterating based on product signals and team feedback.
We changed parts of onboarding after seeing a noticeable drop, refined parts of the Journey experience, updated the Now tab, and added three types of games to create more lightweight reasons to return to the app.
We also gave users the option to change their selected skill, explored improvements to Guided Practice and its access points, and continued improving motion, transitions, and micro-interactions to make the experience feel smoother and more engaging.
This part of the work was important because it showed that the redesign was not only about launching a new UI. It became an evolving product direction.
Outcome and learnings
The V3 product was shipped and used by real users.
The early part of the learning loop worked reasonably well: users were starting and completing early skills. But progression into later skills remained difficult. Fewer users reached the third, fourth, or fifth skill.
This was influenced by several factors beyond the redesign itself: lower traffic, fewer new customers, and changes in content production. Earlier videos were produced with real people and felt more polished and engaging, while later content was created differently and did not always create the same level of perceived value.
For me, the biggest learning was that retention in a learning product cannot be solved by UX alone.
The product experience, motivation system, content quality, perceived value, and acquisition all need to work together.
Still, the redesign created a stronger product foundation. It moved Now You Know from a passive content experience toward a guided learning system with progress, rewards, practice, and a design system that could support future product growth.
What I would do differently
If I had more time and access to users, I would improve three things:
- Validate the biggest assumptions earlier through user interviews and usability testing, especially around why users choose Now You Know and how they compare it to free alternatives like YouTube.
- Test the core Journey and Guided Practice flows before development, because these were the most important parts of the new product direction.
- Create a stricter design QA process with developers to better protect spacing, hierarchy, motion, transitions, and interaction details in the final implementation.