Content Creator interface showing the editing canvas

Modernising WTA's content authoring experience.

WiseTech Global (2025) · Team: 2 UX designers, 1 developer Jump to solution
The design challenge

How might we redesign the course authoring experience so creators can build and edit content quickly without needing technical knowledge?

I conducted research and designed the new tool end-to-end alongside another designer, from research through handoff. We delivered a single tool that meets basic authoring expectations, and a PrimeVue component library that was introduced across the broader admin platform.

Why now?
  • The initial brief was to uplift the UX of the existing content creation platform.
  • The tool had been worked around so extensively that the workarounds had become the workflow.
  • The platform had become a hindrance for editors.
Discovery and Research

To understand the current workflow better, we conducted the following activities:

  • Platform audit of the existing tool
  • Context setting interviews with 3 editors

The interface treats the main editing canvas as a secondary priority.

"Building the content needs to be absolutely front and centre... I don't need to see those things all the time when you're working on stuff. That's probably one of the biggest things I don't like about the current DIY; the real estate you're working on to create is small and constrained."
  • The canvas doesn't support editing widgets.
  • As a result, workarounds were built (like going into the source code) to make simple changes.
Wireframing and Concepts

Split panel layout for clearer hierarchy and editing priority

The existing interface buried the editing toolbar below page-level settings, treating the canvas as secondary to configuration.

Split panel layout for clearer hierarchy and editing priority

Global widget search to reduce workarounds and duplicate content

Widget names were set by internal teams rather than how creators searched for them, leading to creators building workarounds for widgets that already existed.

Global widget search to reduce workarounds and duplicate content

WYSIWYG editing to lower the risk of previewing content

Previewing a course required making it live first, which was high risk and high effort.

WYSIWYG editing to lower the risk of previewing content
What Testing Revealed

Users are willing to adapt their workflow, but muscle memory occasionally gets in the way.

"I've used Moodle, I've used Canvas... coming to WiseTech and using your element is just been another system to learn. It works differently, but I was able to work it out. Now that I understand it, I'm able to get through it."

Users avoided terminology and iconography that felt foreign.

"I tend to follow our process when filling it out because the other fields I don't know what they are... I don't want to put the wrong thing in there. So I just leave them."

Publish and visibility were two different concepts handled in the same place.

"I prefer wording where it's like a hidden page... instead of published page -- whatever wording that is, you can see the page."
Decisions

Focus is given to the task at hand.

The right panel was dynamic, surfacing the relevant options for whatever was selected.

Focus is given to the task at hand.

Descriptions and common search terms were added to the widget menu.

Global widget search required reindexing the database, which wasn't feasible.

Descriptions and common search terms were added to the widget menu.

Display settings were simplified.

Multiple levels of visibility were reduced to one, with hide and show kept at the page level and everything related to going live moved to the course level.

Display settings were simplified.
Results & Impact
  • Defined and implemented a new component library to be used in internal tools.
  • Positive reception from 11 internal users at launch.
  • 6 new widgets have been requested and integrated since launch, suggesting creators are working within the tool rather than around it.