Rebuilding the design and making it easier to read

Today I completely rebuilt the look of the learning platform. The reason was this: the platform had everything, but a person opening it for the first time did not know what to do. Every element carried the same visual weight — the course title, the helper note, the button. The eye had nowhere to land. I fixed the hierarchy first, not the colours. Every screen needs one main thing: what am I supposed to do here? On a course page that is the continue button. On a topic page it is the text itself. Everything else is background. Only then did I move to translucent layers and soft shadows. They are not there to look pretty; they create depth, so a person understands which element is in front and which is behind without having to think about it. I made one mistake here and fixed it later. At first I made the transparency too strong — it looked good, but the text dissolved into the background. Reading became harder. I reduced the transparency and darkened the surface behind the text. When beauty and usability collide in design, usability has to win. This platform is for reading, not for looking at.