Products in Scope
The overall product portfolio of Discovery Education was plagued with issues that all
contributed to the case for a redesign. Aesthetically the experience was dated, inconsistent, and generally
tested poorly with users when doing preference and satisfaction research. Functionally, while the site was
accessible, it lagged significantly behind competing products, it didn't take advantage of any type of
innovative or current technology, was an absolute Information Architecture nightmare, and had been optimized in
regards to development, including back-end which resulted in an absurd amount of server requests.
Home
Everyone owns the home page an no one owns the home page. The home page always has, and
always will be the most contentious experience for a product, and it was no different with DE. One of our main
challenges was creating alignment and shared expectations across a wide enough scope of people taking into
account enough feedback from stakeholders and users. While slightly more modernized and attractive, functionally
the current home page was not a successful nor engaging experience.
Previous version of DE Home.
The new version of Home.
It was a poorly implemented social feed just like so many other social feeds made by teams
that don't specialize in that type of work. Irrelevant content sorted by a poorly done ranking algorithm
resulted in a social feed with minimal engagement from users. Through a series of redesigns, we were able to
regain and increase usage with the hero, the body of the page remains a struggle. The right side of the page
offers what was some useful information but where the link took you was unpredictable. Even when the homepage
functioned well, where you went after was often unpredictable in regards to the experience.
Player
This is the page that is designated to hold a single resource. It could be anything from a
video, and image, to an interactive to a virtual field trip where you're taken through a virtual tour of an
event or place.
One of the main goals of the Player page was to allow users to quickly assess whether a
piece of content was valuable enough to use. The content was most important, but we also had to make sure
certain features like closed captioning, language options, and curriculum standards were included and easy to
identify. It was common to hear about teachers not using a resource solely because it couldn't be experienced
equally by every student in
the classroom. Inclusive design is a guiding principle of ours and we can identify direct impact of it.
Previous version of DE Home.
The new version of Home.
Networks Channels
Discovery Education provides a wide variety of media and content ranging from first-party
sources like MythBusters, to popular publishers, and even user-generated content in addition to all formal and
curriculum required content. This content is also unrestricted and included when districts are provisioned
products providing additional content for students and teachers to learn and use.
It was discovered though, over the course of many studies, that a large portion of teachers
weren't aware of all of the content available and at the same time (not surprisingly) expressed a strong desire
to have access to additional trusted content. This lead to the inception of the idea of Networks and Channels
which resulted in completely reworking,repositioning, and consolidating all of that extra material and content
into a system that made sense, was discoverable and explorable. Channels and networks are experiences setup to
help students and teachers explore and sort through groups of content. Prior to this, users much of the
supplemental material Discovery Education offered