Secure State Review Revenue
Certain usability enhancements needed to be made in order to ensure state adoptions
Simplify Navigation
Content structure complexities made it very difficult for teachers to locate individual resources
Systematically Implemented
A very wide array of educational curriculum and content structures needed to be considered
McGraw Hill's Open Learning Platform is the delivery system that powers K-12 instructional content to teachers and students. While educators valued the instructional materials, when talking with teachers about platform enhancements, the same problem came up over and over again. The deep, nested hierarchy made it difficult to quickly find specific resources, creating unnecessary friction, and disrupting teacher workflows.
This not only affected teachers and students, as it was affecting administrators on state level review boards in charge of whether funding would or would not be allocated for the content and the digital platform. With several major state adoptions on the horizon, there was significant revenue implications and addressing this issue became a critical priority.
The educational content is delivered by a multi-source system that supports all K-12 digital products within McGraw Hill's ecosystem. Structurally, the content hierarchy follows a generalized model of grandparent → parent → child → grandchild, where each level may contain multiple pieces of content—or serve as an “empty container” purely for organizational purposes. In practice, this means a teacher might click into a chapter and not encounter any actionable content until drilling down into a specific lesson. Once there, they may face multiple layers of collapsible content accordions, each requiring additional interaction. This structure led us to deeply consider the teacher's experience at every step—and to ask what they truly need in each individual moment to support instruction effectively.
What This Means in Reality
Each product serves as a grandparent-level structure that can contain multiple top-level sections—like units or chapters—with content tied directly to them, while also nesting second-level sections, such as lessons and individual instructional components, each equally capable of housing their own content.
Russian Nesting Dolls
A similar way to think about it, each layer can contain meaningful content or simply act as a wrapper, requiring educators to progressively unpack each level to reach the instructional materials they need.
The mission was to make content discovery frictionless so that educators, whether teaching virtually or live and in-person, could swiftly find the exact resource they need. For reviewers we asked how might we give a 30,ooo f oot view of each product's content easily and quickly. In order to solve this, we needed to understand exactly how teachers, and administrators, were currently navigating and using the platform.
We deeply analyzed the existing content structures and user flows for content discovery regardless of role. The “Russian Nesting Doll” nature of the hierarchy routinely forced users to click through multiple levels without ever seeing a single piece of content. For teachers it was highly cumbersome and disrupted their flow while reviewers had a hard time sim ply discerning what is contained within the curriculum.
The difference between a teacher and an administrator, in my opinion anyway, was a "show me what you have" vs "I know what I want from you" customer experience. One knows exactly what they're looking for. The other just wants to see if you have the thing they want.
The existing navigation required too many steps to access content, with hidden, non-scannable structures that slowed teachers during live instruction. This revealed a need for a more intuitive, at-a-glance navigation model.
Step 1
Within the product, to access the tree hierarchy of the course, teachers had to first click "Browse This Course" to expose the content structure.
Step 1
Teacher can select a direct hyperlink to to that content container, or the arrow to view what is within that specific folder.
Step 1
Once inside the parent folder the teacher can now see what is contained within that specific grouping.
Considering these findings, I introduced the idea of a persistent left-hand panel containing the course content. A full-page TOC overlay was also introduced as a higher-level view; enabling quick scanning, expanding/collapsing sections, and jumping anywhere in the course. These updates were designed to reduced friction and help both teachers and administrators find what they needed faster. All without losing their current location within the platform.
Content Discovery
Lesson subject matter is easily viewed without unnecessarily jumping in and out of content containers.
High Altitude View
Administrators at the state level can, within one screen, see all the educational content in context.
The redesigned navigation dramatically reduced friction in content access. Teachers were thrilled, adoptions happened on schedule and the Accessibility Compliance Report was intact.
Reduced Unnecessary Friction
Teachers no longer needed to drill through intermediate containers; content hierarchy and materials became actionable at a glance.
Navigation at your fingertips
The persistent navigation panel and full-screen TOC replaced several click-heavy interactions with snappier, context-aware access.
Critical Content exposed
Teachers no longer needed to drill through intermediate containers; content hierarchy and materials became actionable at a glance.
These outcomes supported more confident, responsive classroom instruction, helping educators maintain flow even when needing to pivot to new content mid-lesson.
Evergreen Access to Content
Regardless of the teacher's location, the TOC is readily available via the "Browse This Course" action button present on all content pages.
Full-page Table of Contents
Product content discoverability has been optimized for teachers, enabling quick, intuitive navigation both within and beyond the current lesson flow by removing any distractions not directly related to browsing experience.
Course Navigation Panel
Teachers no longer needed to drill through intermediate containers; content hierarchy and materials became actionable at a glance.
All content is surfaced and actionable
All containers within a grandchild level, which may or may not have multiple pieces of content, are now exposed for the teacher to view and act upon.
This individual project unlocked a multitude of insights on how teachers actually interact with our platform. We took this information and immediately started applying it to other critical parts of the teaching experience.