UXPriya - Khan Academy

Challenge

Content creators and translators were slowed down by 18 different tools, making simple tasks take days. The challenge was to reduce the time to create, manage, and translate courses so teams around the world could keep pace with demand.

To tackle this, I partnered with one PM and eight engineers. I led research to uncover how teams actually worked, then guided workshops and design sprints to shape a simpler experience so content could move faster from creation to translation.

Approach

I ran a global research and alignment effort that shaped our vision. 

‍Research
‍Interviewed 22 content creators and translators across multiple countries. Found that even within the same team, people lacked visibility into each other’s work. 

‍Mapping:
Documented every step across personas and revealed where processes overlapped or diverged. This artifact gave the whole team a shared understanding of pain points. 

‍Workshops:
‍Partnered with PM and engineers to prioritize, align, and explore consolidation. This led to the concept of three new tools: Khan Library, Course Editor, and Translation Manager. 

‍Foundation:
Began initial design exploration for a fourth tool, Content Editor, before I left, laying groundwork for the team to continue.

Final Designs

Khan Library

Central hub for managing courses and translations.
Khan Library gave creators control over when courses were ready for translation, preventing incomplete drafts from being localized. Teams could view course structure and progress at a glance, while translation imports that once took days were cut to minutes. Improved search and filters made it easy to find and manage content across subjects.

Impact:

Provided clear visibility into course status and progress
Made search and filtering faster for all teams
Improved translation quality by blocking incomplete drafts

Create shells for new courses and manage existing content
Mark English courses as available for translation only when they were ready
Prevent other locales from translating unfinished or incorrect courses
See course structure and translation progress in one view
Use better search, filters, and navigation to move faster

Final Designs

Course Editor

Dedicated space for building and managing courses.
‍Before Course Editor, finding and adding content took too long, and publishing edits forced every locale to update at once. Course Editor solved these problems by giving creators a dedicated space to build and manage courses.

Impact:

Made it faster to search and find content with focused navigation
Allowed creators to edit lessons in context and preview before publishing
Showed which translations were connected to edits to avoid breaking them
Provided a clear view of course structure and progress in one place

Final Designs

Translation Manager

One clear view for managing translations.
‍Before Translation Manager, translators had to jump between tabs, track progress in spreadsheets, and import every change without knowing what had been updated. This new tool gave them a single clear view of a course and streamlined how they managed revisions, additions, and outdated content.

Impact:

Showed the full course structure and translation string count in one place
Tracked progress across new, updated, and unchanged items
Used a smart table with expandable sections and rollups
Sped up translation with built-in filters, search, sorting

Outcomes

‍Course Editor and Khan Library
‍Drove a 70% increase in course creation within one year by making it faster to create and curate courses and content. We also added the ability to publish directly at the course level, replacing the old process where content teams had to republish an entire domain for a single change would could take days. 
‍
Translation Manager
‍Enabled expansion into 12 new languages and 9 new locales by replacing manual spreadsheets with a single course view and cutting translation imports from days to minutes. Translation Managers gained real-time visibility, and teams could collaborate more smoothly across regions.