UNOWHY: Design Leadership & Ecosystem Scaling

Six Years of Transformation of SQOOL: From UX Execution to Systemic Governance (2019-2024)

I led the design strategy and operations for the UNOWHY ecosystem over six years. The core success lies in identifying the need to shift from feature design to system design. We first addressed core UX friction points (Hi-SQOOL), then designed the architectural and navigational layer (Connect & La Bulle). This work culminated in building the full Figma Design System and establishing the operational framework that now ensures all specialized applications, from SQOOL Classe to SQOOL Protect, launch with speed, quality, and a unified user experience.

Role

Strategic Design Lead

Timeline

6 Years (2018 – 2024)

Context

Strategic and technical shift necessitated by market expansion (Lycée Numérique) and architectural limitations.

Challenge

Replace an obsolete, proprietary native launcher with a future-proof, web-first platform and design system.

Outcome

Enabled a successful pivot from legacy product to a sustainable SaaS model with a 7+ application suite, increasing product velocity and brand cohesion.

1. The Starting Point: A System at its Breaking Point (2018)

When the initiative began, the UNOWHY EdTech ecosystem was centralized around a single, aging Android launcher. This monolithic foundation, while successful initially, had reached its technical ceiling, creating a design and engineering bottleneck.

Legacy Constraints

Technical Rigidity: The tight coupling with the native Android OS prevented agile updates and failed to meet compliance requirements for new, large-scale public education markets (where standard Android OS was mandated).
Visual Fragmentation: UX/UI was inconsistent between the native launcher and various ancillary web services, leading to a fragmented user experience and low user trust.
Scalability Block: The single-product architecture was incapable of supporting the complex, specialized workflows required by high-school teachers (e.g., real-time classroom control, complex sharing rules, remote device management).

Mission

Fundamentally shift the product architecture to a modern, modular, web-first system, creating a predictable and branded experience across tablets, PCs, and browsers.

2. Phase 1: Focused Redesign & Hypothesis Testing (2018–2020)

The first step was to stabilize and modernize existing critical components while testing the feasibility of a web-first approach for complex features.

A. Hi-SQOOL: Early Wins in UX (2019)

We began with focused redesigns on critical, high-frequency apps, such as the session sharing platform (Séances). This provided an early testing ground for new UX patterns targeting the high-school audience (Lycée Numérique).

The Hi-SQOOL project provided the first opportunity to use new interaction paradigms and a cleaner visual language for high-school users.

B. The Connect Vision Prototype (2020)

To validate the web-first hypothesis at scale, we developed Connect, a high-fidelity vision prototype for a modular dashboard intended to replace the legacy launcher.

Strategic Function: Connect was a tool for internal buy-in. It was built as a functional React demonstrator, proving that a unified, responsive web experience was technically feasible.
Interaction Innovation: We developed the Bulle concept—a persistent, animated, context-aware overlay for system-level shortcuts, designed to enhance touch interaction flow.

The Connect dashboard conceived as the teacher’s command center.

The Bulle concept. A high-fidelity prototype that explored next-generation persistent navigation and contextual actions across the new OS layer.

3. Phase 2: The Strategic Pivot (2021–2022)

The Connect prototype achieved its main goal: it validated the technology but revealed a fatal strategic flaw. The monolithic dashboard was too dense and risked competing directly with established, government-mandated platforms (ENTs).

The Decision: The design insights led to a strategic pivot. Instead of one large dashboard, the future lay in a modular application suite that would complement the existing EdTech ecosystem by providing focused, best-in-class tools.

Building the Foundation: The SQOOL Design System

This pivot required a new, centralized system to ensure the coming suite of apps would feel coherent.

Design as Architecture: I focused on architecting a scalable Design System (tokens, color, grid rules, component library) to support decentralized development across multiple squads.
Brand Cohesion: This phase also involved working with the brand designer to finalize the new SQOOL visual and editorial identity, moving toward a modern, trustworthy, and consistent aesthetic.

<!– VISUAL 4: Design System Showcase –>

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*Caption: The Design System became the single source of truth, ensuring visual and interaction consistency across all seven future applications, significantly boosting development velocity.*

4. Phase 3: Modular Delivery & Scaling (2022–2024)

With the strategic direction defined and the foundational design system in place, the focus shifted to launching the specialized suite of web apps.

The SQOOL App Suite

We decomposed the monolithic challenge into specialized applications, each designed to solve a singular, high-value user problem:

SQOOL Classe: Real-time classroom activity supervision and device control.
SQOOL Partage: Document and resource sharing between teachers and students.
SQOOL Applications: App catalog browsing, access, and distribution.
SQOOL MDM: Device fleet management for IT administrators.

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*Caption: Overview of the SQOOL App Suite. Each app is a standalone web experience, sharing authentication and the core Design System to ensure a unified feel.*

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Operationalizing Consistency

As Lead Designer, my role transitioned to a cross-squad coordinator:

Co-construction: Collaborating with PO Leads to write detailed specs and PRDs for complex flows (e.g., starting a supervision session, cross-app sharing).
Design Quality Assurance: Implementing weekly UX syncs and design QA rituals to enforce interaction patterns and accessibility rules across all development teams.
Timeline Expansion: Extending the system to new applications like SQOOL Protect (mobile security) and SQOOL Extend (Cloud PC UX flows) while maintaining brand cohesion.

5. Outcome & Reflection: Design as Strategy

The six-year transformation was a success, replacing an obsolete native system with a future-proof, scalable web platform.

Measurable Impact

Metric	Before (Monolith Architecture)	After (Modular Suite + DS)	Impact
Ecosystem Size	2 Outdated Native Experiences	7+ Modern, Web-Based Applications	50%+ Functional Expansion
Product Velocity	Low (Blocked by native tech debt)	High (Independent, agile feature delivery)	Accelerated speed and quality
Business Model	Legacy Product Ownership	Sustainable Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Model	Strategic shift toward recurring revenue

Key Learnings for Design Leadership

Vision Prototypes > Launched Products: The non-shipped Connect prototype was arguably the most impactful deliverable. It provided the necessary evidence to stop a costly wrong turn and pivot toward a more viable strategy.
Design as Architecture: The ultimate value of design in an ecosystem is less about individual pixels and more about creating the structural, systematic rules that enable long-term scaling and consistency across independent teams.
Consistency is Currency: In EdTech, predictability builds trust. The Design System became the essential asset for reducing cognitive load for teachers and students moving between specialized tools.