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SOLIDWORKS

Helping new users learn an enterprise 3D CAD software by creating a guided learning experience.
SOLIDWORKS internship project for Summer 2025.

Role

UX Design Intern

TEAM

4 Senior UX Designers, 1 Senior UX Design Manager

TIMELINE

13 weeks, June - September 2025

TOOLS

Figma, SOLIDWORKS, Adobe Creative Cloud

About

SOLIDWORKS is a 3D CAD platform used by engineers, designers, and manufacturers to create and simulate products across industries.

Full details about this project are under NDA. For more info, shoot me an email!

Overview

Improving onboarding by guiding users to the right learning resources.

I explored how onboarding could be personalized to help users find relevant learning resources based on their skills and goals. Through competitive analysis, analogous research, and co-design workshops, I identified opportunities to reduce decision-making and create a more guided learning experience.

Problem

Users struggled to find the right learning path.

Icon credit: confused man by Akshar Pathak from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

Solution

Providing users with personalized recommendations.

Solution

Guiding users toward personalized learning paths.


Competitive analysis

Identifying key factors to onboarding approaches across different products.

I analyzed products with complex feature sets and learning curves to understand how they guide users through onboarding. I noticed that each product’s onboarding approach is defined by two factors: the information shown to users and the way it’s delivered. Creating the graph below helped me identify a product’s positioning and uncover gaps in SOLIDWORKS’ onboarding.



Competitive analysis

Identifying key factors to onboarding approaches across different products.

I analyzed products with complex feature sets and learning curves to understand how they guide users through onboarding. I noticed that each product’s onboarding approach was defined by two factors: the information shown to users and the way it’s delivered. Creating the graph below helped me identify a product’s positioning and uncover gaps in SOLIDWORKS’ onboarding.



Analogous research

Analyzing video games to see how learning can be exciting.

I started to think about other contexts where learning plays a big role, and landed on something I enjoy frequently in my free time: video games! They’re a great example of how people can be highly motivated to learn complex mechanics. Additionally, game designers have the responsibility of determining what information is shown, how it’s delivered, and when it appears. Analyzing these approaches inspired my ideas on motivating users and structuring learning.

I played lots of Sid Meier's Civilization V…


Co-design workshop

Leading a collaborative workshop to discover the best available resources.

I designed and facilitated a workshop to understand which resources users considered most valuable when learning SOLIDWORKS. I asked participants to sketch their ideal page with the prompt: “If you could give a new user a box of tools to learn SOLIDWORKS, what would be in it?”

To encourage creativity and discussion, I included:

  • A round of Pictionary to warm up

  • Participants explaining their sketches to the group

  • Casual sticky-note critique and refinement

I piloted the workshop first with my UX team, iterated the format, and then conducted it again with interns across different roles. In total, I collected ~10 sketched concepts with priorities, preferences, and frustrations.


Insights

Users learn best when information is directed, contextual, and fun.
Learning should adapt to user behavior

Video games reveal information when an action is triggered.

→

→

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Recommendations change with user activity
Engagement encourages continued learning.

Games reward users for utilizing complex mechanics.

→

→

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Encourage exploration with playful interactions
Users need clear starting points.

Workshop participants imagined resource curation, not sifting through a large library.

→

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Create guided learning paths based on user goals.


Impact

Transforming onboarding from a fragmented learning environment into an interactive experience.

By the end of the summer, I delivered a set of design proposals that reorganized and personalized learning content to help users spend less time searching for resources and more time actually learning.


Reflection

Systems thinking + iteration

Think in systems: I learned to consider the entire product ecosystem, leveraging available assets to reduce bloat and increase visibility of underutilized content.

Fail fast: I learned to iterate quickly early on within the design process and focus on big-picture goals. Early “failures” gave me more data to work with, which led me to more effective solutions faster.

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made while listening to k-pop

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