Operationalizing Experience Strategy for Teacher Certification

Teacher certification is a high-stakes, regulated journey where confusion directly impacts trust and enrollment. At Teachers of Tomorrow, I led the implementation of strategic recommendations into scalable layouts, reusable backend modules, and clearer certification pathways that could be realistically built, maintained, and evolved over time.

Why this was hard

Improving a certification platform isn’t just a UX problem; it’s an operational one. Every change had to account for real constraints that shaped what could ship, when it could ship, and how safely it could evolve.

Role: Website & UX Manager
Scope: Experience execution, UX systems, governance
Platform: WordPress + Advanced Custom Fields
Users: Prospective teachers navigating multi-state certification
Focus: Turning strategy into scalable, shippable systems

At a glance

RESEARCH & CHALLENGES

  • Certification requirements vary by state and change over time
  • UX improvements needed to ship without disrupting active enrollment
  • Marketing required speed, while engineering needed stability Compliance accuracy was non-negotiable
  • One-off fixes would create long-term UX and development debt

Key challenges included:

This work required making tradeoffs explicit and designing systems that could hold up under real-world pressure.

Certification is high-stakes, and execution matters

CONTEXT & PROBLEM

Teachers of Tomorrow supports alternative teacher certification across multiple states, each with its own eligibility rules, timelines, and documentation requirements. For many candidates, this represents a major career shift involving time, cost, and personal risk.

We work with an external UX agency on a comprehensive audit to identify friction points across the certification journey. The challenge was no longer identifying issues, but ensuring those recommendations translated into improvements that teams could actually ship and sustain.

Legacy layout

Improved structure and clarity

From recommendations to reality

CONSTRAINTS

  • Interpreting audit findings into concrete experience decisions
  • Prioritizing improvements for impact and feasibility
  • Sequencing work into clear, time-bound phases
  • Designing scalable layouts aligned with certification mental models
  • Partnering with engineering to define reusable backend modules
  • Establishing UX governance to prevent regression over time

What I owned

The audit identified opportunities. My responsibility was deciding what changed, how it shipped, and what scaled. My role was to translate the audit findings into a phased implementation plan that balanced clarity, feasibility, and long-term system health. The goal wasn’t a disruptive redesign, it was meaningful improvement that delivered value quickly while reducing future UX and development debt.

To do this, I created and led the UX Audit Implementation Roadmap, aligning experience priorities with engineering capacity, marketing needs, and compliance constraints.

Audit Insights

Experience Decisions

Reusable Systems

Cross-functional synthesis used to align priorities before execution

This shifted the work from recommendations into systems teams could actually build and maintain.

To reduce development cycles and support long-term scalability, I partnered with engineering to define reusable backend modules using WordPress and ACF.

Designing for confidence, not just compliance

Rather than treating certification requirements as static content, the experience was reframed around candidate confidence, helping users understand what was required, what to do next, and whether they were ready to proceed.

EXPERIENCE STRATEGY

  • Surfacing requirements early and making them scannable
  • Reducing jargon and explaining terms in context
  • Clarifying next steps without pressure
  • Designing layouts that support informed decision-making
Experience decisions focused on:

WordPress + ACF

Reusable Modules

Certification Pages

Modular Certification Page Layouts

Experience decisions were embedded into layout rules, CTA logic, and content hierarchy, allowing marketing teams to move faster without reintroducing friction or trust issues.

Certification journeys were redesigned using modular layouts that clarified steps, requirements, and actions. Shared structures ensured consistency across programs while allowing for state-specific variation.

Layout Optimization for Clarity

Layouts were refined to surface critical information earlier and clarify next steps, supporting conversion without urgency or pressure.

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  • Shared page structure
To reduce development cycles and support long-term scalability, I partnered with engineering to define reusable backend modules using WordPress and ACF. This allowed teams to scale improvements without rebuilding layouts or introducing inconsistency.

Reusable Backend Modules (ACF)

1

2

Key experience system decisions

SOLUTIONS

  • Requirements hierarchy

3

UX Governance Through Patterns

4

  • Consistent action placement

WordPress Core

ACF Modules (Fields & Blocks)

Certification Page Layouts

Pattern Area

CTAs

Rule

Field-driven content

Content hierarchy

Requirements before benefits

Layout spacing

Consistent vertical rhythm

Accessibility

Contrast and focus states

Pattern Area

Before

After

  • Reduced cognitive load
  • Clear next step

Certification
Variability by State

Experience Strategy & UX Systems

Designing with development in mind

Experience improvements were designed in close partnership with engineering to ensure solutions were technically feasible, maintainable, and scalable.

By aligning UX patterns with backend capabilities, we reduced rework, accelerated iteration, and created a foundation for future improvements without increasing technical debt.

WORKING WITH ENGINEERING

Governed
UX Patterns

Compliance
Requirements

Modular
Certification Layouts

Engineering
Capacity

Marketing
Velocity Needs

Constraints

Outputs

Reusable
ACF Modules

Phased delivery for sustainable change

PHASED EXECUTION

Delivering improvements in phases reduced risk while maintaining momentum. It allowed teams to ship meaningful progress early, align cross-functional stakeholders, and build systems that could support change over time, rather than relying on disruptive redesigns.
Rather than pursuing a large-scale redesign, improvements were delivered in phases to balance impact with stability. Turning an external UX audit into a pragmatic, low-risk execution plan that delivered immediate gains while building long-term system stability.:

Immediate clarity and risk reduction

Focus: Reduce confusion and friction without disrupting active enrollment

Phase 1

  • Clarified CTAs and next-step messaging across key certification pages
  • Improved accessibility, spacing, and mobile readability
  • Reduced cognitive load in high-traffic areas of the journey

This phase prioritized changes that could ship safely and deliver immediate value.

Optimization Readiness

Focus: Create a foundation for continuous improvement

Phase 3

  • Established a consistent information architecture across certification pathways
  • Aligned layouts and content structures to support future expansion
  • Prepared the platform for ongoing optimization without increasing technical debt

This phase ensured the experience could evolve without requiring repeated redesigns.

Why this approach worked

Systemization and scale

Focus: Enable faster iteration while reducing development overhead

Phase 2

  • Introduced modular certification page layouts with shared structures
  • Defined reusable backend modules using WordPress and Advanced Custom Fields
  • Embedded UX rules into layout and content patterns to prevent regression

This phase shifted improvements from one-off fixes to repeatable systems.

Phased delivery allowed the team to balance speed, stability, and long-term system health.

Impact and experience leadership

IMPACT & REFLECTION

Multi-State Pathway Design

This work established a more resilient experience foundation for Teachers of Tomorrow, improving clarity for prospective teachers while reducing friction for the teams responsible for maintaining and evolving the platform.

Rather than optimizing isolated pages, the focus was on creating systems that could adapt to changing certification requirements, engineering capacity, and organizational priorities.

What made these improvements last was not a single redesign, but the introduction of shared rules, reusable components, and phased delivery. By embedding experience decisions into the platform itself, future changes could be made confidently without reintroducing inconsistency or debt.

This project reinforced that experienced leadership is less about perfect flows and more about building systems that survive real-world constraints.