For over 40 years, Ken Burns has been working with PBS to tell America’s stories. And for the last decade, we’ve worked with PBS to repackage these stories into adjunct educational materials for classroom use. With Ken Burns Classroom, we were able to bring together hundreds of new and existing educational products into a simple, searchable platform for teachers and students.
UI/UX
With so many different types of content to consider, the site’s organization was critical to its success. We knew it had to be dynamic, searchable, and intuitive to navigate. We refined our initial concepts through architecture and a series of wireframes, testing various approaches to taxonomy to connect a wide array of visuals, text, interactive media, video, animation, and downloadable teacher and student resources.
Content Organization
With dozens of documentaries and decades of material to consider, we worked closely with PBS to identify seven key product categories. We then selected, cleaned, and organized over 400 videos, timelines, interactives, lesson plans, activities, essays, and biographical materials to create a cohesive catalog.
Design & Development
Our design strategy focused on connecting the site’s widely varied assets. We used custom illustration to draw visual connections, creating an intuitive sense of harmony. Throughout development, we built the WordPress site to flexibly group content, allowing users and admins to connect material by topic, format, time period, and more. To improve the site as a resource for teachers, we programmed options to create personal content playlists and create lessons.