I was tasked with a full redesign of PBS.org. It was important that we took every opportunity to improve and modernize the user experience and ease the discovery of PBS content.
I lead brainstorms and ideation, competitive research, UI design, design system building and implementation, user testing, and stakeholder presentations for this project. I collaborated with Mary Crocamo, Senior Design Director, and Amy Rubino, Director of UX Design. I also collaborated closely with our Product Manager and Engineers through every step of the process.
In the redesign, we wanted to position PBS as a relevant brand with a more modern UX & UI, bringing us closer to our streaming service competitors. We also wanted empower the user to explore the breadth and depth of our content by making discovery and sorting by genre easier.
I posed the question: If you were to redesign PBS.org today with no budget or limitations, what would you create?
We then bucketed our ideas into categories, which we brought back to our Product Managers and Engineers to discuss.
Our UX Director also lead discovery sessions with PBS stations and other stakeholders to determine challenges and needs across the system.
These helped to guide our priorities before beginning sketches and wireframes, and to inform every step of the process.
I sketched across breakpoints from Desktop to Mobile. After multiple iterations, I started turning our top concepts into low fidelity wireframes.
I laid out high-fidelty designs with detailed notes and led presentations across the system including PBS stations, content & marketing teams, and the C-suite to pitch the new PBS.org experience.
I started with 3 tests:
General look & feel, content discovery, navigation, sign In
Local content, Passport, and reinforcing the relationship between the user and their station
Video-Watching experience, including Show, Video, and Genre Landing screens
I’m laying out each screen at 4 of our core breakpoints (1440, 1024, 768, and 320) while building and implementing the new PBS.org design system. Each element has detailed notes on data, transitions and animations, and more.
I’m working alongside 3 engineers and doing QA for every implementation of components across the site.
We’ll work towards future state updates including multiple user profiles and in-browser notifications as well as back end updates to improve our search functionality and recommendation engine.
“Laura does an outstanding job knocking out PBS.org design deliverables, as well as coming up with new ideas for the product. She knows when to stick to a predefined scope and when to push the boundaries and introduce new ideas. Laura has ownership on the visual design for PBS.org.”
“Blown away, as always, by digital design.”
“I love the new design. It’s amazing! Great work. (Looked like A LOT of work.)
Very thoughtful and intuitive. So exciting. Can’t wait to see the live version next year and increase in user engagement and views.”