Client
Austria’s Federal Chancellery
Services
Public sector UX UX strategy UX audit Information architecture Product design UX/UI design Product discovery
Year
2024
Role
Product Designer
The E-BM Cockpit Learner serves Austria’s Federal Chancellery and supports the Federal Chancellor and the government as a federal platform.
As part of the Sourcing International team, I led the UX audit and redesign planning, focusing on product direction before implementation rather than rebuilding the entire system.
The problem
The system worked: users could search, filter, book trainings, track certifications, and view providers. Still, the experience was complex, dated, and tough for new users.
The story
Roadmap
I evaluated the platform, found friction points, and mapped a redesign roadmap rooted in usability, psychology, digital learning habits, and systems thinking.
Our goal was to achieve clarity and encouragement, not just visual updates, to ensure the platform remains sustainable for the next phase of public-sector digital learning.
Impact and numbers
The platform serves about 30,000 users in Austrian public administration, including learners, managers, trainers, training managers, and seminar leaders. Most users are learners.
Users log in two to three times monthly, while power users access it daily. Occasional users need a self-explanatory interface on each visit.
Most use is on desktops in offices; mobile is limited to quick status checks or confirmations. The relaunch aimed to build a three-year foundation, improve appeal among younger staff, and reduce workflow friction, mainly in training search and booking.
This work clarified the strategy before development, distinguished quick wins from deeper updates, and clarified modernization stages for stakeholders.
Context
The E-BM Cockpit supports professional education for public-sector staff, where reliability, compliance, and clarity are crucial.
The Federal Chancellery’s digital agenda prioritizes usable electronic services. As a result, the platform’s usability and modernization are especially relevant.
The platform needed to accommodate users with varying levels of digital skill. The average staff age is 38, but attracting younger employees has become increasingly important. Expectations now favor simpler, more intuitive platforms. These preferences reflect trends in SaaS and university systems.
The initial request focused on simplification, but deeper analysis revealed structural and behavioral issues, not just visual ones.
The platform provided information but failed to guide users. It displayed training data but did not foster a sense of progress. Although a search existed, users needed internal knowledge to use the catalog. While functional, the system lacked supportiveness.
Understanding the problem
Stakeholder discussions and system reviews identified several friction points.
The catalog required users to understand internal categories before searching, which challenged new learners. E-learning did not appear in date-based searches because there were no set dates. While logical, this was confusing for users.
Interactive elements often lacked clarity. Unclear clickable areas, dense listings that were hard to navigate, and empty labels highlighted missing data instead of providing content.
The homepage failed to communicate the platform’s importance or highlight skill-building, career growth, progress, or personal benefits.
The system required an improved structure rather than more features.
The audit included stakeholder interviews, behavioral analysis, usability review, motivational principles, and comparisons with modern learning platforms.
I reviewed platforms such as edX, Khan Academy, Domestika, and MasterClass to understand how they convey learning value, motivation, and progress. The aim was to learn how these systems reduce friction and support user engagement, not to copy them.
The key insight: Users understood what features were available but not why they mattered for their learning journey or professional growth.
The platform communicated “what,” but not “why.”
The platform displayed training and administrative information, but it failed to connect learning to growth, confidence, or achievement. For a public-sector learning platform, this connection is important. Motivation supports adoption, not just emotions.
Another issue was cognitive overload. Too much information appeared at once, status visibility was weak, and users had to interpret the system instead of receiving guidance from it.
This insight guided our strategic direction: simplify structure, clarify purpose, and make progress visible.
Strategic direction
The redesign roadmap targeted five key shifts.
The first shift focused on motivation architecture. I proposed clearer benefit framing on the homepage, visible progress tracking, more visible milestones, and an enhanced diploma presentation. The confirmation document could be more meaningful rather than just a basic PDF containing training data.
The second shift focused on structural simplification. The menu should reflect importance and usage frequency. Dashboard logic must support different learner types, such as newcomers, regular users, and heavy users. New users need guidance, while heavy users require fast access and clear status visibility. A static dashboard fails to serve both effectively.
The third shift addressed search and catalog clarity. The catalog must reduce reliance on internal categories. E-learning should integrate logically into search results or appear clearly through filtering. This approach makes discovery predictable.
The fourth shift emphasized interface governance. Buttons, clickable areas, tags, and indicators must remain consistent. For 30,000 users, inconsistencies increase support costs and cause hesitation.
The fifth shift focused on information hierarchy. Dense listings need a clearer structure. Cards and grouped content improve scanability. Reduce non-essential information, and avoid displaying missing data as empty labels.
Designing change within constraints
Technology and platform considerations
We built the platform on SAP’s enterprise system using SAPUI5, a tool for building web browser-based apps. SAPUI5 lets us reuse interface components and follow SAP’s design rules. But, because of these tools, we had to work with what was already there, including old parts, how users log in, and what our team could handle.
These limits meant we couldn’t change everything from scratch. So I focused on changes that would really help users, like making information easier to find, improving the dashboard, cleaning up how you search and browse, making statuses easier to see, and making buttons and links more consistent.
The platform works with other government systems and adheres to their rules for use. Some information comes from SAP and other background tools. People log in the same way they do for other government websites. The system lets learners join training online, in-person, or both, and gives them the info they need for each type.
The redesign needed to address desktop-first use, limited mobile features, performance constraints, and available development capacity.
The strategic opportunity was modernization within a limited digital ecosystem, rather than AI automation.
Some recommendations establish the groundwork for more intelligent future features, such as content recommendations, progress-based dashboards, contextual help, and learner-specific views. These features are not AI, but they provide the structural foundation for future personalization and smarter learning support.
This distinction is important. The project demonstrates technological awareness without overstatement.
Structural redesign proposals
Proposals included a homepage focused on goals and benefits, simplified training detail pages, modular dashboard cards, scalable catalog layouts, and clearer KPI visibility for leadership dashboards.
I redesigned each section to prioritize user goals instead of feature listings.
For example, “My trainings” became dynamic: newcomers receive guidance, regular learners see current progress, and heavy learners gain quick access to upcoming sessions and nearly completed e-learning.
I reimagined the catalog as a discovery experience, not just a database. I aimed to help learners find relevant training without prior knowledge of the internal structure.
The roadmap distinguishes simple, high-impact changes from more complex functional improvements. This approach helps stakeholders understand which updates can be implemented quickly and which require greater technical coordination.
Strategic deliverables
The engagement provided more than visuals. It delivered decision-making tools for stakeholders and development teams.
I delivered a UX audit, a strategic redesign roadmap, interface modernization guidelines, dashboard concepts for different learner profiles, catalog and search improvement proposals, and UI mockups for key platform areas.
I prepared presentations outlining the rationale for recommendations, shifting the conversation from “how should it look?” to “what should it do for users?”
I designed deliverables to eliminate ambiguity before implementation. These deliverables support product decisions within a constrained public-sector environment.
I focused on making a complex public-sector platform easier to navigate, easier to understand, and more useful for learners.
Stakeholder alignment
Public-sector projects require careful coordination. The team must explain, validate, and connect decisions to actual constraints.
I conducted alignment sessions with stakeholders, reviewed feedback, and documented considerations for alternate layout directions. The goal was not to defend a design approach, but to create a shared understanding.
This was important because the product served a large, diverse user base. A redesign for 30,000 users cannot depend on personal preference; it requires a clear rationale.
Outcomes and long-term value
This engagement clarified product direction and established a realistic roadmap for phased improvement. The motivation-based learning architecture, simplified dashboard design, clearer search and catalog logic, and modern visual direction align with digital learning expectations.
I led the audit and strategic planning phase, establishing the foundation for future modernization.
In public-sector environments, teams prioritize reducing friction and increasing clarity at scale.
This project strengthened my role as a system-level UX strategist, balancing governance constraints, usability principles, technical realities, and long-term viability.
Austria’s Federal Chancellery · Product design, Public sector UX, UX audit · 2024