Product Design · UX Redesign

SkillCat

A self-initiated product design task: a teardown and redesign of the home screen for SkillCat, a mobile app that teaches valuable trade skills, focused on reducing clutter and keeping learners coming back.

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Role Product Design · UX

Type UX Teardown & Redesign

Year 2025

The Brief

Learning a trade takes time, so the app has to keep you coming back

SkillCat introduces people to valuable trade skills, but the real challenge is the journey after that first session. I took the existing app, audited where the experience created friction, and redesigned the home screen around one question: how do we accompany users along the journey instead of overwhelming them at the door?

The Problem

The current home screen

🗂️

Overwhelming and unsorted

Courses appear in no particular order, and Continue Training is sandwiched between EPA certifications.

↩️

Resuming is buried

Resume Training is pinned to the bottom and does nothing to actually encourage you to pick back up.

🎨

Off-brand color

Several random shades of orange clash with the real SkillCat brand and confuse the eye.

🧭

Confusing navigation

Tabs like Lab, Discovery, and Repair overlap and are hard to understand at a glance.

The Redesign

A home screen that pulls you back in

Continuation becomes the whole page

Instead of being one line or a buried tab, picking up where you left off becomes the center of the screen. For returning users that is the single most important action, so it earns the most space, and that is the lever that lowers churn.

Less clutter, clearer intent

A clear value proposition welcomes new users with one obvious way into the course catalog, while everything else is stripped back. The result is calmer, more on-brand, and tells you exactly what to do next.

Going Deeper

Other UX challenges I flagged

Beyond the home screen, I documented the issues holding the wider product back, with clear recommendations for each.

🎨

Inconsistent color

Random shades of orange used throughout the product confuse users and dilute the brand. I proposed a single, consistent SkillCat orange.

🏷️

Mislabeled tabs

The Repair tab is really a community showcase, and it loads a training page before the social feed. I recommended renaming and reordering for clarity.

🧹

Redundant menus

Lab and Discovery overlap and the Lab goes stale once its three quizzes are done. I proposed consolidating them into one clearly labeled tab.

The Takeaway

Auditing a real product, not a blank canvas

SkillCat shows how I approach an existing product: study how real people move through it, find where the experience leaks attention, and redesign around the one behavior that matters most. It is the kind of focused, evidence-led UX work I love, taking something live and making it noticeably easier to use.

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