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CANVAS STUDIO

Strategic UX Evaluation and Decommissioning

PROJECT OVERVIEW

​Timeline

October 2024 - January 2025

Project Type

Strategic Design Leadership Challenge

Team

UX Designer & Team Lead  - Adam Wolf

Instructional Designer - Adam Bunnell​
Instructional Designer - Meg Zurlage

Brief

Tasked with reviving and redesigning Canvas Studio, I led a cross-functional task force to assess its viability, uncover user needs, and define the future of design assets for instructional development at IU.

“Most Canvas Studio traffic was focused on basic graphics. Other assets had largely fallen out of use.”
— Canvas Studio Revision Task Force, 2024

Canvas Studio: Strategic UX Audit and Retirement Recommendation

Canvas Studio was originally built as a central resource hub for faculty and instructional designers at Indiana University. It provided downloadable graphics, templates, and layout guides to support course development in Canvas. By 2024, many of those assets had become outdated or redundant with the introduction of newer tools like DesignPLUS, the Course Design Wizard, and shared resources from the ID Community of Practice.

I was appointed to lead a cross-functional task force to assess the future of Canvas Studio and determine whether it was still worth maintaining or redesigning. We audited the content, reviewed usage data, held planning sessions with stakeholders, and mapped out how faculty were already shifting toward more modern, flexible tools. Over time, it became clear that Canvas Studio no longer met the evolving needs of our users.

Rather than pushing forward with a full rebuild, we made a strong case for sunsetting the project and shifting our focus to newer platforms with broader reach and better alignment. This case study outlines how we reached that decision and what it taught me about UX leadership, institutional alignment, and knowing when not to ship.

MY ROLE + DESIGN PROCESS

  • Led and documented research conversations across departments

  • Helped define strategic value and alignment with broader institutional goals

  • Evaluated competing tools like DesignPLUS and the Course Design Wizard

  • Identified gaps in asset use and surfaced user feedback opportunities

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dark but beautiful photorealistic view of a public transit system, perhaps a city commuter
UX PROCESS

  • Discovery & Research: Usage metrics, CoP feedback, stakeholder interviews

  • Competitive Analysis: DesignPLUS, ID CoP assets, Adobe Express, etc.

  • Content Audit: Which legacy assets were still useful (graphics, banners)

  • Strategic Recommendation: Retirement of Canvas Studio, redirect to CoP

  • Future-focused Ideation: Vision for templates, video assets, style guides, job aids

Insights from Evaluation

  • Many assets were outdated or duplicative of newer tools (DesignPLUS, Adobe Express)
     
  • Engagement data showed users primarily accessed only a few graphic elements, and a not insignificant number were external to the university
     
  • Overhauling the resource would require significant effort with minimal return, it didn't make strategic good sense
     

Strategic Response

  • Proposed sunsetting Canvas Studio, shifting our efforts to support the Instructional Design Community of Practice
     
  • Redirected users to utilize new tools within the Canvas LMS and other resources made available both by the university and within the growing ID CoP
     
  • Prioritized alignment with departmental strategy and cross-departmental collaboration
     
  • Collaborated across teams to ensure smooth transition process and knowledge sharing

Future Opportunities

  • Creating lightweight, flexible templates for ID and faculty use across platforms
     
  • Highlighting and sharing high-impact design work via CoP and internal showcases
     
  • Supporting scalable, branded asset development through tools like Adobe Express and the Course Design Wizard

REFLECTION

This project taught me that good UX design isn’t always about making something new — sometimes it’s about knowing when to step back. Early in the Canvas Studio evaluation, I expected to help plan and execute a beautiful and functional redesign. But as our research unfolded, it became clear that the better path forward was actually strategic retirement.

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Leading this effort gave me a deeper appreciation for the value of cross-functional collaboration, especially when decisions impact an entire ecosystem of tools. It also pushed me to think more like a systems designer: focusing on clarity, sustainability, and organizational alignment over individual deliverables.

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Most importantly, I learned how to advocate for users by protecting their time and reducing clutter, not just by adding features. I think in  some ways that’s UX at its best.

Key Responsibilities

  • Led the UX discovery and strategy process

  • Facilitated stakeholder interviews and content audits

  • Created prototypes and recommendations

  • Guided the pivot from redesign to sunsetting

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