HUGE

Understanding diverse audiences

Scholastic.com is a trusted resource for many education related audiences: teachers, parents, administrators and librarians. It’s also a popular destination for kids interested in beloved Scholastic brands like Clifford the Dog and Harry Potter. HUGE began the initiative with an intense research phase, seeking to understand each of these target audiences and how they used Scholastic.com and Scholastic resources. Our research included focus groups and anthropological studies of teachers in the classroom using Scholastic's online properties. The result of this research was a comprehensive model of user behavior, defined personas, and user scenarios. Our results were used as a tool to drive the design process.

Focusing on business drivers

As a part of the research phase, HUGE examined Scholastic's businesses and the means by which Scholastic monetized Scholastic.com. This research was then used to create a long-term framework for Scholastic.com which focused on ways to maximize revenue for existing business units while creating new online business models.

Many initiatives, one web site

HUGE synthesized Scholastic.com's diverse audiences, business needs and online initiatives into a strategy that created a singular user-focused website experience. This included development of an overall site structure that exposed the most relevant parts of Scholastic to each audience.

A rewarding future

Related design efforts include the design of Scholastic's e-commerce initiative, Scholastic Parents, and a teacher book wizard.

In addition, HUGE’s redesign of Scholastic.com was recently awarded a webby in the Youth category at the 12th Annual Webby Awards, the leading international honor for the Web. "The Webby Awards honors the outstanding work that is setting the standards for the Internet," said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. "HUGE's redesign of Scholastic.com's win is a testament to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators."