Certiport · North Star

I designed a candidate-first North Star that could expand to later roles and product states.

I co-led a three-year North Star initiative and translated the candidate experience into a tested Figma prototype and phased roadmap built to support future roles and product states.

Overview

The North Star focused first on candidates while creating an extensible foundation for later roles and product states.

Goals:

Help candidates register and quickly understand their next useful action.
Connect certifications, pathways, transcripts, study support, achievements, and career progress around candidate goals.
Validate the future experience with students and sequence changes so useful improvements could ship alongside legacy services.

Role: Sole Product Designer · co-led North Star initiative
Responsibilities: Sole product design for the candidate North Star; co-led the design sprint and carried research synthesis through prototyping, usability revisions, and phased priorities.
Collaborators: Product, engineering, research, and leadership
Timeline: Three-year North Star initiative

Business problem

Years of product and organizational growth left candidate tasks spread across experiences that reflected the platform structure more than a learner’s journey.

Entangled legacy services made broad change difficult, so the future direction needed to guide valuable improvements in phases.

Business need

Define a tested, extensible candidate-first direction that can improve registration and engagement while supporting phased delivery across legacy services.

User problem

Students had to move between registration, exam preparation, pathways, results, transcripts, and support without a clear view of progress or what to do next.

Text-heavy screens, limited mobile access, and unclear action labels added friction to common tasks.

User need

A coherent, accessible candidate experience that shows progress and next actions, and connects preparation, credentials, and future learning.

Problem to solve

Problem statement

Create a testable candidate-first North Star that connects key learner tasks and can evolve alongside the existing platform and backend.

How might we

How might we make the candidate journey from registration and preparation through exams and credentials feel connected while enabling a phased path from legacy services?

01 / 04

Three decisions shaped the North Star.

Unify a fragmented candidate journey while creating a foundation that would not block later expansion to other roles and states.

Candidate portal dashboard and workflow states — Dashboard · candidate intent before organizational structure.

Start with the next useful candidate task.

The dashboard prioritizes progress, upcoming work, and clear routes into study and registration instead of mirroring the organization behind the platform.

Candidate portal pathway and progress screens — Pathway · progress and next action in one model.

Connect credentials to a visible pathway.

Pathways turn certifications from isolated transactions into a sequence a learner can understand and act on.

Candidate portal shown across desktop and mobile — Transcript · achievement becomes reusable progress.

Make the record useful after the exam.

Transcript and credential states preserve achievement evidence and help candidates decide what comes next.

02 / 04

More of the candidate portal

Account, profile, dashboard, and post-exam UI states from the North Star portal direction.

Candidate pathway planning screen — Study-plan experience

Legacy candidate registration experience — Legacy candidate-portal baseline

03 / 04

The candidate-first prototype made the strategy testable.

Candidate portal design-sprint evidence collage — Prototype evidence + broader program outcomes

Moderated candidate research shaped the dashboard, pathways, transcript, and assistant entry points. The North Star became a tested prototype and phased roadmap.

04 / 04

The North Star was a tested direction, not a finished platform.

Tradeoff

Focusing first on candidates created clarity but required the foundation to remain extensible without implying every future persona was already designed.

Evidence boundary

The North Star itself was a tested direction and roadmap.

Next test

Validate later role-specific states as they enter the roadmap instead of assuming the candidate hierarchy transfers unchanged.

Certiport path to development — The roadmap separates a tested North Star from phased implementation.

Go deeper

See the decisions behind the work.

The full case study contains additional project context, iterations, and evidence.

Full case study

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