ABCMOUSE LEARN
Supporting parents through an educational platform offering an ever-growing library of learning resources.
UX/UI
End-to-End Design
Responsive Design
Accessibility
OVERVIEW
ABCmouse has been a leader in children's education since 2010. Seeking to shift away from increasingly costly paid advertising, they wanted a more sustainable organic growth strategy as digital behaviors evolved. Through UX and SEO strategy, we identified an opportunity to engage parents beyond the paywall by delivering real, ongoing value.
As the solo UX designer, I partnered cross-functionally to conceptualize, design, and launch ABCmouse Learn as a free, accessible, and scalable educational platform bringing value to parents through learning resources. This platform reimagined how parents engage with the brand beyond the paywall through organic discovery and fostered deeper brand connection, successfully setting up a new sustainable and organic growth path.
PROBLEM
ABCmouse had limited organic reach and competitors were gaining traction with fresh, modern experiences offering value upfront that resonated with today's digitally savvy parents. How might we modernize the ABCmouse experience outside of the paywall to provide immediate educational value, build trust through a free resource hub, and create a new, organic pathway to growth?
BREAKDOWN OF THE PROBLEM
For baseline comparison, the ABCmouse product page experience was mostly unchanged since launch in 2010.
SOLUTION
Through data-driven design iterations we launched ABCmouse Learn, an educational platform offering an ever-growing library of learning resources, bringing value directly to parents and also consistently trending at the top of Google searches, effectively setting up a new sustainable and organic growth strategy.
PROCESS & STRATEGIC APPROACH
To ground the design direction, I began by parsing through over a decade of design files and since there was no true design system or style guide, I conducted a comprehensive audit to synthesize the existing visual language and identified core components.
Then I conducted market research and a competitive analysis, analyzing leading educational platforms to identify modern UX patterns in children's education. I evaluated their content organization, accessibility, and engagement strategies, especially how they encouraged discovery through free resources. This research helped define opportunities to modernize ABCmouse's look and feel while maintaining user trust.
My goal was to strategically approach building a robust, scalable foundation.
NAVIGATING CONSTRAINTS
This project presented a unique set of constraints as a company with a long legacy.
The existing ABCmouse experience had remained visually unchanged for over a decade. While its design had been historically successful, it had become outdated.
Due to all previous attempts at change failing to create significant results in conversion, there was naturally a strong resistance to any visual change.
In addition to these contraints were strict brand policies, organizational limitations, and tight budgets that all required resourcefulness and creative-problem solving to achieve the goals of this project.
I took a collaborative and incremental approach, building trust through communication and data.
My challenge was to demonstrate that usability and conversion could be improved through updating design without alienating the existing user base.
The platform was built on a proprietary legacy codebase, which severely limited modern UI enhancements, dynamic layouts, and interactive components.
I partnered closely with engineers and prioritized design iterations that offered the highest user impact for the lowest technical cost, ensuring feasibility and maintaining development speed.
Instead of treating these as blockers, I treated them as design parameters and focused on designing flexible components within the platform's limitations.
As part of improving the full user experience, I collaborated closely with SEO throughout this project to bridge the product experience with discoverability, since users arriving from specific search queries were often met with a generic homepage.
✦ We identified high-intent queries and I strategically designed an experience that could be dynamically served to users based on their specific needs.
This ensured a seamless journey from search result to a highly relevant experience, effectively setting up a new organic growth strategy.
DESIGN APPROACH
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
Due to resistance to change, the first designs were required to be nearly identical copies of the existing product page experience with only the content changed to be SEO optimized.
As I expected, A/B testing showed that these designs did poorly, with only half the conversion rate of the existing product page.
In order to push modernization incrementally, I introduced small modern design elements to be tested against the previous design.
A/B testing showed that these updated designs, while not winning over the existing product page experience, closed almost half the gap.
We were heading in the right direction.
BUILDING OUT OUR LIBRARY OF FREE RESOURCES
✦ Before moving forward with more modern design changes, we built out more of our resource library to have a robust variety of content and gain traction. This would aid in our goals to build trust in order to move the brand forward in design sensibilities.
As the platform continues to grow, our experience needed to scale accordingly with our ever growing library of educational resources.
I focused on building components that could flex across various content types and future features. This would ensure consistency across the experience, optimize performance, and accelerate future development.
Our first resources were Articles targeting the educational needs of parents based on the most searched-for queries.
Working closely with engineers and the SEO team, I designed a system of components that would accommodate all types of content and could be adjusted easily within our strict technical limitations.
Shown above is a template with flexible components translated into a live article.
We continued to add more types of resources like coloring pages, printables, and activities to further meet the needs of parents and aid them on their educational journey.
I also advocated for close collaboration with engineers throughout this project to optimize the user experience and assets for faster load times.
To proactively address our limited resources, I integrated ethical use of AI tools, helping our small team to streamline workflows and increase content production while maintaining design quality.
I began efforts at further modernization with the Program pages.
I saw a broader opportunity to have more collaboration with the core product design team, and initiated efforts for more communication on design exploration and patterns, advocating for a more integrated approach.
These updated designs tested well and successfully gained strong results, addressing user needs and acquiring more subscribers.
Shown above is an interactable Before and After of the Program pages.
OVERCOMING DEVELOPMENT & TESTING ROADBLOCKS
The path to launch and achieving success was not linear. There were engineering and testing roadblocks that required constant adaptability.
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I designed and collaborated with my team to build an experience that provided immediate educational value to parents, built trust through a resource hub, and created a new, organic pathway to growth.
02
03
SOLUTION
Final Outcome: ABCmouse Learn
ABCmouse Learn is an educational platform offering an ever-growing library of free learning resources, bringing value directly to parents.
REFLECTION:
MY THOUGHTS ON THIS PROJECT + LESSONS LEARNED
Key takeaway: By tailoring free resources to the needs of parents, building a flexible component-based design, and utilizing iterative data-driven design to show impact, our team was able to both bring value to parents and create a organic pathway to growth.
Navigating all the challenges throughout this project required adaptability, cross-collaboration and communication, and creative problem-solving.
The strategy of introducing modern design elements incrementally was crucial. Through data-driven design iterations I was able to achieve significant results that ultimately helped users with their goals and also create trust to move the brand forward towards modernization.
Next steps:
Continued iteration and testing towards a better user experience, pushing more personalization, interaction, and modern design.
Build out a homepage blogroll that would centrally lead to different resources on the platform.
