Empowering lifelong skill development with story-centric product design

Most people struggle to follow through on personal skill-building goals. In fact, 91% of New Years’ resolutions fail due to vague plans, lack of structure, and low motivation over time. We created Odyssey for the everyday learner. Using storytelling and guided planning, Odyssey helps users create realistic, resilient paths towards long-term skill development.

My Role: I led the UX, UI, and visual design for Odyssey, creating the learning framework, core user flows, and systemized visual language that took the product from concept to a functional 0→1 prototype. I also co-led 6 research and testing rounds with 58 learners to shape and validate the experience.

Skills: UX Research & Testing, Education Design, UI, Prototyping, Storytelling

Tools: Figma, Miro, Google Forms

Team: 2 designers, 1 copywriter

Duration: 10 weeks

SOLUTION OVERVIEW

Transformative learning, disguised as a whimsical journey

We immersed users in a compelling narrative that seamlessly integrated evidence-based learning strategies and self-reflection, guiding them through the creation of a personalized self-development plan. Our main goal was to sustain long-term learning, so we drew heavily from educational psychology and tested the platform with busy undergrad students.

First, we guide users in constructing a fail-safe, actionable itinerary.

Defining the goal

Guiding users to set an initial time-based constraint for structure.

Self-reflection increases user motivation and proper alignment with their values.

Future self-visualization helps prime users for success!

Breaking down the goal

Anticipating Setbacks

Integrating into the Daily Schedule

The itinerary integrates into a dashboard, offering visual progress tracking and accountability.

Daily View: focus on logging practice sessions to meet the current milestone

Map View: zoom out and see progress on the long-term journey

The journey can be challenging.

To ensure users never feel alone, Tori the Tortoise provides real-time clarification and advice, supporting them throughout their Odyssey.

PROBLEM SCOPE & DEFINITION

Is watching Netflix considered a personal interest?

Our team's passion for lifelong learning inspired the non-linear process of creating Odyssey. We knew sustained learning was important, but in many ways difficult. Crowd-sourcing broad attitudes on learning, we found self-motivated learning especially interesting.

With a specific focus on undergrad students familiar with self-defined schedules, discovery interviews revealed consistent presence of leisure time like “watching TV” or “working out” in student lives. These didn’t contribute to a longer-term goal.

Confounding definitions of personal interest helped us identify that everyday short-term factors distract users from longer-term pursuits.

Narrowing target audience to undergrad students

2. Generating problem-focused questions from areas of opposition and affinity

3. Stakeholder mapping to narrow target audience to undergrads

1. Scoping learning through affinity diagramming crowd-sourced data

Initial unstructured interviews uncover barriers to pursuing a long-term goal

1. Cross-referencing 7 interview transcripts

2. Affinity diagramming struggles into narrowed pain points

3. Building hypothetical “preferred” scenarios from current data

4. Identifying 3 core barriers to students planning their daily schedule effectively

Identified User Pain Points:

Getting started 🙄, sustaining motivation 🐢, and managing time ⏰.

USER & MARKET RESEARCH

Surveys reveal specific mechanisms of confidence and struggle

We surveyed another 27 students to uncover why long-term goals are hard for students to achieve. Ruling out areas students felt competent in their planning abilities, we identified a nuanced struggle no existing planning tool has managed to address: integrating an important long-term goal into an already-busy daily life.

2. Quantitative results paint a detailed view of struggle and confidence

3. Insights from qualitative short-answer responses

4. Competitive analysis on scheduling and planning tools

1. Surveying students on time management and prioritization

How we synthesized the results:

Participants, surprisingly, scored themselves highly on four traits. These were: 1. self-efficacy towards achieving goals, 2. self-awareness of personal needs, 3. frequency of self-reflection, and 4. knowledge of time management strategies. People felt pretty confident in methodologies and what they wanted.

The majority of participants scored the importance of their long-term goal 4 or 5, out of 5. People didn’t need to be reminded of the importance of their long-term goals.

︎ Students don’t lack skill-related resources nor personal drive. The majority attribute failure in long-term skill-building to lack of time and lack of priority.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Educational psychology lays the foundation of sustained learning

With a better grasp on users' struggles and gaps in tools, we turned to experts and studied pedagogical theories. We focused on models that address goal-chunking, learning over time, mastering a skill, self-reflection, and cyclical feedback. I led whiteboarding sessions to extract usability from abstract models, ultimately bridging user needs with research-backed methodologies.

Research 📖

Synthesis 💡️

Mapping continual self-reflection to the “targetted feedback” model

Experimenting with the 4MAT engaging learning model

Big breakthrough: integrating cycles of practice/feedback as chunks over time, maintaining “learning flow”

Finally, a custom learning framework targets specific user needs

IDEATION & TESTING

Solutions that align daily progress with long-term goals

Building on insights from research and literature, we ideated a range of solutions focused on reframing long-term goals. Through a speed-dating exercise with users, we tested our top three ideas and gathered valuable feedback. This highlighted the importance of prioritizing rewards, reducing cognitive load, and implementing goal-chunking to better align with daily usability.

Users liked separating work and personal goals but needed clearer goal breakdowns.

The familiar calendar interface resonated, but users questioned how "me time" would stay motivating over time.

Users enjoyed the tactile reminder but found it hard to link it to complex, evolving goals.

DESIGN CONCEPT

A journey metaphor puts planning on the roadmap

We made a significant breakthrough by moving away from the calendar interface in favor of a custom interface that guides users through creating a long-term plan. Embracing the journey metaphor, we reimagined traditional concepts like goal chunking into more tangible action items. For instance, instead of the usual cycle of practice and feedback, we described it as orbiting a planet or a flower blossoming.

Understanding the benefits and limitations of a calendar interface revealed a hidden skill gap—helping users create a realistic, inspiring, and effective plan to acquire a new skill.

Mapping learning concepts to a journey and identifying planning/onboarding as the key stage

Exploring different metaphors and visualizations

Whiteboarding sessions focused on interface design

VISUAL, INTERFACE, & CONTENT DESIGN

Friendly and supportive, with a touch of whimsy

To curate a tone of ongoing support, we crafted visuals and copy that feel both thoughtful and motivational.
Our content-heavy design underwent multiple testing iterations to ensure users could follow our metaphor with clarity.

We elevated the compelling image of a winding path to a destination into a modular illustration system to support visual consistency and a logical flow throughout the user journey.

Experience our solution in full here.

REFLECTION

Lessons we learned along the way

Despite the challenges, our team remained determined to reframe big goals into achievable steps, fostering self-confidence, self-efficacy, and a stronger sense of identity. I’m proud of what we accomplished in 10 weeks, but even more so of the insights we gained along the way—unsurprisingly, we did a lot of learning ourselves. 🧡

Key learning moments:

People want to learn. We initially focused on communicating the importance of personal growth, but research showed that most learners already understand the “why.” The real barrier was creating a process they could realistically sustain.

Narrative is a powerful motivator. Our early prototypes embedded learning tasks directly into Google Calendar. Shifting toward a journey-based narrative unlocked true engagement. Users resonated more deeply with story-driven guidance paired with structured, research-backed tools.

When in doubt, research or test.
Every time we felt unsure, testing clarified what mattered. This became our team’s north star.

If given more time, I would:

Build and test the dashboard experience. Odyssey’s true success lies in whether users stay motivated weeks and months into their journey. I’d expand the dashboard to include reflection moments, rewards, and progress cues that reinforce long-term habit formation.

A/B test style and explore personalization. We experimented with tone, but couldn’t confirm which styles resonated with which learners. Testing could validate our metaphor, and I’m curious to explore how personalization could strengthen autonomy and motivation!

Thanks for reading!