Scaling Skillshare for an international audience

Overview

60% of Skillshare’s new members came from outside the U.S. The product hadn’t caught up.

By 2021, Brazil and India had become two of Skillshare’s largest markets, despite an experience available only in English, recommending primarily American teachers, and charging in U.S. dollars.

We weren’t introducing Skillshare to new audiences. We were catching up to the ones already using it.

Problem

Skillshare’s international growth had outpaced the product’s ability to support it. Members could sign up from nearly anywhere, but language barriers, unfamiliar pricing, and U.S.-centric content made the experience harder to navigate.

The challenge wasn’t simply translating the interface. It was figuring out how to support different markets without maintaining a separate product for each one.

Role

As a Senior Product Designer, I helped lead Skillshare’s internationalization efforts across nine surfaces, working with 14 teams and approximately 60 collaborators over five months.

My responsibilities included designing language selection, adapting the design system for multilingual experiences, and partnering with engineering and product teams to establish reusable localization patterns.

Approach

We started by examining where the experience assumed every member spoke English and lived in the United States.

The audit exposed problems throughout the product: fixed-width components that couldn’t accommodate longer translations, promotional graphics with embedded English text, and purchasing experiences built around American payment conventions.

Rather than treating these as isolated fixes, I focused on creating shared design patterns that could support the first four launch languages and make future expansion less dependent on one-off design and engineering work.

Solution

01. Designing for language flexibility

I introduced language-selection patterns across platforms and adapted foundational components to support longer text, different typefaces, and translated content.

Working with engineering, we incorporated real translations into the design workflow so teams could identify layout problems before implementation.

Viewport

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02. Making content relevant, not just readable

Translation alone wouldn’t make Skillshare feel local. Members also needed to discover classes that reflected their interests and the markets they lived in.

I helped turn promotional banners into reusable components that separated text from imagery, enabling editorial teams to feature different content by region. One localized banner in Brazil increased class click-through by 22%.

In a related personalization initiative, I also designed reusable class rows that could accommodate contextual titles referencing members’ interests, followed teachers, and class activity.

Location

United StatesBrazil

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03. Adapting the purchasing experience

Members outside the United States encountered U.S. dollar prices and payment experiences that didn’t always reflect local expectations.

I helped adapt checkout for translated content and regional pricing, including support for local payment methods such as UPI in India.

The goal was to make purchasing understandable and trustworthy, regardless of where members lived.

Impact and learnings

The internationalization initiative established a reusable foundation for translated interfaces, localized content, and regionally appropriate purchasing experiences.

Not everything was resolved at launch. Hindi remained out of scope, and some content assets still contained English text. But the work gave teams a more consistent foundation for supporting international members.

The biggest lesson was that localization couldn’t succeed as a layer applied after product design. It had to become part of how the product was designed and built from the beginning.

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