National Democratic Training Committee (NDTC)
Project Overview: During my Product Design Internship at NDTC, I worked to improve the usability of their self-paced training educational platform. I conducted user interviews, contributed to wireframes, and collaborated cross-functionally to address key learner pain points. Our goal was to make the experience clearer, more accessible, and election-ready.
Timeline: Sept 2024 - Dec 2024
Role: Product Design Intern
Tools/Methods: Figma, FigJam, User Interviews, Sketching, Wireframing, Cross-functional Collaboration
Team: Cross-functional team of product design, development, and curriculum
Empathizing With Users
The platform supports first-time candidates and organizers— many of whom have limited tech experience, busy schedules, or uncertainty about where to begin. To better understand user needs, I reviewed anonymized feedback and conducted discovery calls with a diverse group of learners.
These conversations revealed consistent frustrations: difficulty navigating the learning flow, uncertainty about next steps, and confusion around course accessibility.
This led me to my guiding “How Might We” questions:
How might we help users clearly understand where they are in their training journey?
How might we reduce confusion and hesitation for new or prospective learners?
How might we make it easier for users to find their in-progress courses?
UX Research
Affinity Map
I created this affinity map by analyzing pain points and recurring themes from the user interviews. Grouping feedback into categories like navigation issues, enrollment barriers, content clarity, and motivators & positives helped me synthesize insights and identify where the user experience needed the most improvement.
Note: This is a representative version of the original affinity map. Specific feedback and quotes have been generalized due to NDA restrictions.
Key Findings
Through user interviews and research, I identified several core needs and challenges among learners and prospective users of the platform.
What does the user need to do?
Understand how to move through the course catalog
Navigate the platform easily without confusion or feeling lost
Easily find ongoing courses
What should the experience solve?
Clarify how the course catalog is structured and how users should progress
Streamline navigation to reduce confusion and cognitive load
Make ongoing or in-progress courses easy to locate and resume
Low Fidelity Wireframe
I created low-fidelity wireframes to explore layout improvements for NDTC’s training catalog. The goal was to clarify how courses are grouped by topic, reduce visual clutter, and make it easier for users to browse and return to in-progress trainings. Due to privacy constraints, the original sketches cannot be shared.
Final Product
The redesigned training catalog has since launched, incorporating several UX recommendations from our research. I contributed to early layout explorations and synthesized key insights from user interviews. Features like topic-based grouping and improved access to in-progress courses reflect feedback from learners and usability testing.
Key Takeaways
User research is powerful — Speaking with learners gave me insights that would have been difficult to uncover through assumptions alone. It reinforced the importance of grounding design decisions in real user needs.
Small contributions can make a meaningful impact — While I wasn’t the lead designer, my work in early wireframes and research helped inform decisions that improved the platform’s usability.
Cross-functional collaboration matters — Working closely with teammates across design, training, and development teams taught me how to balance user goals with content limitations and technical feasibility.
Designing for civic tech requires empathy — Many users were new to political training. Designing an experience that supported and empowered them was both challenging and deeply rewarding.