StatusDesign delivered · Implementation paused before launch
Demme Learning has published Math-U-See from Lancaster, Pennsylvania for three decades. By late 2023 a parent looking for it could land on the marketing site, the store, or the software, each on its own domain with its own login, while the sales team was opening a second market in charter schools and districts. The brief carried two constraints from the first meeting: do not spend the homeschool trust, and do not build a second site for schools.
Curriculum first. Software second.
The brand decided the structure
Before we drew a screen we wrote down what Demme believes about learning and treated those statements as constraints on the design. Seven principles came out of that work, and four of them changed the product. A card sort in customers’ own words settled the rest. People think in subjects, and they expect one path through reading, buying, and doing the lesson. So the structure leads with Subjects, keeps Shop as a sibling, and fixes the Digital Toolbox in every navigation state. Eight sections cover twenty-three pages.
One structure for learning, buying, and teaching
Starting point / separate destinations
- Marketing site
Discover the curriculum on one domain.
- Store
Move to another domain to buy.
- Learning software
Reach the lesson through a separate site and login.
Proposed model / a shared hub
- Subjects lead
Start with the curriculum the family is looking for.
- Shop stays a sibling
Keep purchasing visible within the shared navigation.
- Digital Toolbox stays in reach
Keep the route to teaching available in every navigation state.
The same lesson, different responsibilities
We reviewed the paths against four personas, each one defined by why someone opened the page and how many minutes they get before something interrupts. We redrew the flows three times and delivered the hub model. The megasite and the Digital Toolbox sit on top as working components in Demme’s own colors and type: Inter for lessons, buttons, and data rows, Bree Serif where the brand speaks in its own voice.
- Teach the operation
Three illustrated steps connect regrouping to the physical blocks.
- Keep help in the lesson
Solutions and teaching notes sit below the exercise, in the instructor panel.
In the Toolbox, orange marks what only the instructor sees: the lesson solutions, the notes on where a child gets stuck. A child signed in to the same lesson sees it without them.
A shared lesson with role-specific help
Learner
- The lesson
The child sees the lesson without the instructor-only solutions and notes.
Instructor
- The lesson, with support
The orange help panel adds solutions and notes on where a child may get stuck.
What we handed over
We delivered a 21-page spec and 17 Figma pages in August 2024. The build paused before launch, so there is no public site to point at.
