Designing with empathy to create experiences that truly support people
Cambridge University Press & Assessment
Internship
ROLE
Associate Experience Designer
YEAR
Jun-Aug 2024
01 OVERVIEW
Understanding my experience
MY EXPERIENCE
As an Associate Experience Design Intern, I gained hands-on experience in UX/UI design by supporting the creation of engaging digital experiences across CUPA’s web and mobile platforms. During my internship within the English UX team, I contributed across multiple live initiatives spanning interaction design, usability research and strategic experience visualisation.
My work focused on improving the teacher experience within Mosaic and Cambridge One - from refining assignment flows and reporting journeys to designing onboarding guidance and visualising future-state customer journeys.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTS
Cambridge One is the umbrella digital learning environment where teachers assign activities and students complete learning exercises. It hosts curriculum-aligned content and performance tools.
Mosaic sits inside Cambridge One as the insights dashboard for educators focusing on detailed student progress, review tools and performance visualisation.
SCOPE OF CONTRIBUTION
Cambridge One is the umbrella digital learning environment where teachers assign activities and students complete learning exercises. It hosts curriculum-aligned content and performance tools.
02 REFRAMING THE ASSIGNMENT EXPERIENCE
Optimising teacher decision-making
CONTEXT
The assignment update and reporting journey needed to align with updates introduced in Cambridge One, while also improving how teachers navigated Mosaic. The goal was to make the experience clearer, more consistent and easier to interpret.
Problem: Teachers needed to quickly understand student performance, identify intervention opportunities and navigate assignment setup without friction. However, inconsistencies between products and unclear performance indicators made interpretation more difficult than necessary.
THE PROBLEM
Problem: Teachers needed to quickly understand student performance, identify intervention opportunities and navigate assignment setup without friction. However, inconsistencies between products and unclear performance indicators made interpretation more difficult than necessary.
03 REDUCING COGNITIVE FRICTION
Designing guided onboarding
DESIGNING GUIDED ONBOARDING
Brief: We want a walkthrough for the C1 theme of the test player.
04 DESIGINING THE NORTH STAR VISION
Designing the future journey
DESIGNING THE FUTURE JOURNEY
Brief: We want a walkthrough for the C1 theme of the test player.
05 REFLECTION
Improving through iteration
REFLECTION
What this internship has taught me:
This internship really shifted how I think about design. Before this experience, I focused mostly on interface-level decisions - layout, hierarchy, interaction details. Working within Cambridge’s ecosystem helped me see the bigger picture: how different products, teams and decisions connect within a larger digital environment.
Sitting in on usability sessions and taking structured notes showed me how easily assumptions can creep into design. Watching teachers interpret performance data in real time reinforced how important clarity is, especially in tools that support real classroom decisions. It also made me appreciate how research drives meaningful iteration.
The North Star journey project pushed me to think at a different scale. It wasn’t just about UI, it was about communicating a shared vision clearly enough for multiple teams to align around it.
Overall, this experience helped me move from thinking about individual features to thinking about connected systems and real user contexts. It strengthened my confidence in contributing within structured teams, working within constraints and grounding design decisions in evidence rather than instinct. It also made me more intentional about simplicity, recognising that clarity often matters more than adding more functionality.