Sesame Workshop
User Experience, Design System, Web Design
A new digital strategy and design system for a brand beloved by all ages.
Sesame Workshop is a nonprofit organization responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-known, Sesame Street—that is televised internationally.
After years of digital expansion, Sesame Workshop's ecosystem of 3,000+ pages of content was scattered across 8 websites, making it difficult for various audiences – from young learners and parents to funders – to find the right content. We conducted extensive research and created a new strategy and architecture for the Workshop's digital offerings based on user needs and mindsets. The new digital strategy is flexible and scalable, ensuring that the Workshop can continue to expand its footprint for years to come.
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"The most sophisticated people I know – inside they are all children."
-Jim Henson
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We built and followed a roadmap for the creative process that carried us through three phases to Discover, Refine, and Launch a powerful digital experience.
Annotated Design System
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Faceted Search
For discovery we explored the existing information architecture (IA) of Sesame Workshop and related sites to be migrated, and developed an approach for a post-migration site navigation. We then prepared the client for the work to be done in key deliverables, and began exploring a unified design system.
In the third phase we expanded and finalized page compositions, built the component library, and configured the CMS – to launch a unified experience for Sesame Workshop. Essentially, a complete overhaul of design, content, and strategy. All the while balancing a globally-recognized brand, within digital constraints; including adjusting 28 colors into a flexible and a11y web palette.
Our goal from the beginning was to display a straight-forward IA with an emphasis on visible content. We gave special consideration to the Family Resources part of the experience – which is most trafficked by educators, caregivers, and social workers – to help navigate a curriculum that is dense and content-heavy. And the content is easy to find with Faceted Search allowing users to winnow down by age group, topic, languages, format, and more.
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The overall design of the site included modular and customizable components, with back-end CMS flexibility and auto data-generation. Essentially, Wordpress-enabled components that can turn on/off different sections or content at the flick of a switch so editors can focus on content. Ultimately, we created a flexible design system built with atomic principles, to power thousands of pages within a central source of truth.
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