Typography Education Product case study
Research
Define
Ideation
Testing
Final
Deliverable
Research
Design students and professionals struggle to master typography due to traditional, isolated learning approaches that lack engagement and practical application. Currently available educational resources are fragmented and often fail to provide interactive, collaborative experiences that could make typography learning more effective and enjoyable. While designers consider typography crucial to their work, existing solutions don't adequately support different skill levels or foster a community of practice where learners can experiment, receive feedback, and grow together.
How might we create an engaging, collaborative platform that transforms typography education from a solitary, theoretical exercise into an interactive, community-driven learning experience that builds confidence and practical skills for both beginners and advanced practitioners?
11 users were interviewed which included 5 designers and 6 non-designers.
Designer
Graphic Designer
UX Designer
Interior Designer
Marketing Consultant
Finance Professional
English Major
All the interviews were carried remotely through Zoom and Google Meet. The interview results were carefully categorized to find a common theme using FigJam, Then the results were used in Affinity Map, Empathy Map and User Journey Map.
Define
Our primary persona is a committed learner who require comprehensive typography knowledge as part of their formal education and future career development. They need structured learning paths, detailed exercises, and professional-grade features to build fundamental skills and enhance their portfolio.
Our secondary persona is a casual learner who seeks basic typography understanding for specific work tasks, preferring flexible learning schedules and quick, practical solutions they can apply immediately to enhance their existing professional work.
We organized and categorized qualitative data from user research to prioritize the needs of users like our personas Kristen and Emily. The data could be categorized into 4 main ideas.
Empathy maps helped to deeply understand user behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and motivations.
A user journey map was developed to track how our primary persona—Kristen experiences her typography learning process, highlighting her distinct motivations, challenges, and emotional response at each stage.
Based on our initial user research, we pivoted from a mobile app to a web application. Design students and professionals primarily work on laptops and computers for their design projects, making it more efficient to seamlessly share and receive feedback through a web platform rather than transferring files between devices.
ideation
The low fidelity prototype included lessons section and community section.
Testing
An Action Priority Matrix was created based on insights from usability testing to identify high-impact, low-effort improvements versus lower priority fixes. This visualization helped prioritize design refinements by balancing user impact with implementation effort, ensuring the most critical usability issues would be addressed first.
We tasked our 11 usability testing participants to restructure the typography learning platform's information architecture. This exercise revealed natural groupings of content and helped establish user-centered navigation patterns.
Job Board
Help learners find jobs related to the field of typography.
Monetary potential
Earn from Mentor Hub; license fonts and typographic assets, advanced-level lessons
Stronger product proposition for the design professional
Enhance product features to meet the advanced needs of design professionals