itslearning LMS

On a long journey

Over the past 3 years, I’ve reorganised how our UX team works — from daily collaboration to design delivery. We moved from Sketch to Figma, introduced shared templates, unified visual design, and aligned our workflows with development teams.

These changes made it possible to deliver larger structural updates to the LMS interface: a refreshed color palette and typography, consistent sizing, navigation that works seamlessly across devices, and reusable page and form templates. Together, these updates reduced inconsistencies, improved accessibility and decreased development time.

Making use of a Design System

Design systems are a hot topic for a decade already, however, it is not often shared publicly that building a design system is just a beginning of a journey — adopting it is a true challenge.

itslearning has its own design system called Prometheus. When I joined itslearning, one of the first things I had to undertand was Prometheus’ adoption. During my research, I learned from designers and developers that even though they are aware that there is a design system, they don’t use because of some reasons. It repeated in every development team I asked.

As a UX team lead, I could directly affect designers’ work, which in turn should lead to a higher usage of the design system by developers. My goal was to make every team member believe that usage of the design system and having clear rules is beneficial for the product and them personally.

• I led muliple activities with the UX team to define a shared value of a design system and general unification of design for itslearning.
• This led to creating a Manifesto for the UX team and a set of guidelines
• Cleaned up unnecessary variations
• Regular design critique sessions were established, where at the beginnig I all the time attracted designers’ attention to inconsistency and unnecessary design system violations. Over time, designers started pointing this out themselves.
• Created universal layout and page templates: pages, forms, lists etc.

For example, in the design system we used to have 2 options for a checkbox size. However, nobody could tell what’s the difference and where to use which one. After analysing use cases and objective reasons to have options, the UX team decided to deprecate the Large option.

Live saving templates and patterns

We analysed 100+ pages in itslearning, identified patterns and created a unified layout template and page templates in the Prometheus design system.

It's so simple to layout the page content now with standard sizes in the designs. Both for spacing, layout etc. So thank you. 🙏 Even though we can't put it everywhere yet, for the new stuff it's a life saver. — Michael Fürstenberg, Frontend Lead & Architect at itslearning

Does it mean that all pages should be the same? Of course not, however, not many of them need special treatment.

For example, the LMS start page, a course overview or specific exercises require unique solutions to work effectively for students and teachers. At the same time, numerous settings pages and rarely used elements can use the same page template, which allows to minimize the delivery time.

Leading a team

I believe that designers do their best work when they have freedom to take initiative. However, in a large product, this freedom must be balanced with alignment and consistency. My role as a team lead is to keep this balance. Through regular 1:1s, I learn what motivates each designer and adapt their tasks so they stay both meaningful and challenging.

You are one of the best design leaders I ever worked with. And some of them had two or three times more years of experience than you have now. You are so talented, both in design and in leadership— Matylda Rohleder, UX designer

There is our design system, Prometheus, that helps us maintain consistency, and every UX designer contributes to its evolution.

The UX team meets weekly for syncs and design feedback sessions where designers present their current work, exchange feedback, and make decisions together. This rhythm helps us move fast, stay consistent, and maintain a strong sense of shared ownership.

Growing a team

Since the end of 2022, I hired 4 UX designers and led a recruiment process for an Accessibility expert. Also, I took part in numerous recruitment processes for UI and UX designers for other UX teams in Sanoma Learning. This included:

• Preparing job descriptions
• Scanning CVs
• Organizing and leading interviews at all steps of the recruitment process
• Providing feedback to candidates

Depending on the needs of a specific recruitment, I adjusted the process to make it fast and reasonable.

Accessibility

Back in 2022, itslearning was looking for a UX design lead with practical experience in accessibility. By then, itslearning has already been audited multiple times and met legal consequences of non-compliance with state accessibility requirements.

I led the effort to audit and improve the LMS interface to meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards. This involved collaborating closely with developers, product owners, and QA teams to identify and address accessibility issues.

Historically, accessibility is seen as an antipode to usability. For every designer who joined the team I created an individual learning plan to build the knowledge and dispel this myth.

The biggest challenge is interpretation of accessibility guidelines and best practices by external accessibility auditors, as well as internal specialists. This means that UX designers in itslearning need to be able to refer to WCAG success criteria and Understanding Documents to be able to participate in constructive discussions and come up with feasible design solution. I do this myself and train my team to do the same.

As a result, we significantly enhanced the usability of the platform for users with disabilities, ensuring that itslearning is an inclusive learning environment for all students and teachers.

itslearning accessibility statement

Improving education with AI

In my role, I have been exploring how AI can enhance the learning experience for students and educators. This includes researching AI-driven tools that can provide personalized learning paths, automate administrative tasks, and offer real-time feedback to learners.

Native speaker review for better localization

itslearning supports more than 20 languages. UX copy is translated by an external agency in batches every month, but they often lack context that’s crucial to localize content without loosing or changing meaning.

I organised a native speaker review for 3 languages in the UX team: Polish, Russian and Ukrainian. Every month designers receive all new text lines that are going to appear in itslearning for review. I personally am in charge of Russian and Ukrainian.

This didn’t get unnoticed: I received a feedback from a Russian speaking developer who pointed that the quality of translation significantly improved.

Sanoma Learning

itslearning is a strategic business unit of Sanoma Learning which has a large and growing portfolio across several European countries, including its learning companies like Sanoma Italia, Santillana, and VAN IN. These companies offer a wide range of digital products and services, such as online courses, e-books, and digital textbooks, to support education.

This means that I need to align itslearning design goals with the Sanoma Learning’s design strategy.

A prominent example is a Sanoma Learning Design System that is about to replace local solutions. As an itslearning representative, I collaborate with the Design System team on creating a non-disruptive strategy for migration and share best practices that have been already established at itslearning.

Aleksandra combines a rare level of professionalism with a deep commitment to accessibility and product quality. Aleksandra always ensures her team is moving in a clear, unified direction, and her approach to organizing work is truly impressive. — Marcin Klimaszewski, Head of UX at Sanoma Learning

I also lead broader UX initiatives such as the creation of an accessibility annotation kit for all designers in the company, and the Accessibility Champions group.