ATK’s Online Cooking School is an underdog in comparison to it’s bigger, more well-known siblings. Saddled with a limiting third-party platform that wasn’t doing it justice, we wanted to give OCS the video-centric, premium experience that its content and it’s users deserved.

Cooking School courses have a lot going for them: high-touch, high-value instruction from instructors with big, kind personalities. This more personal and involved vibe wasn’t being served by the platform’s cramped, sterile, one-size-fits-all template. The existing platform also flattened the depth, detail and magic of the content at a higher level. A brittle browse and discovery IA meant that paying members were missing out on tons of discrete ‘snackable’ technique videos, limiting the types of habits home cooks were building around the platform.

• Bring OCS closer to the ATK family of sites while maintaining its unique identity

• Let OCS’ strengths shine in a video-centric, instructor-forward, premium experience

• Create better paths for natural discovery: more opportunity for micro and macro learning moments

• Improve engagement and retention for existing customers

• Increase starts from net new audiences

We lead a fast and furious discovery sprint to help stakeholders imagine what OCS could feel like with the CMS and front end display managed in-house. We paired with instructors to understand their teaching philosophy and editorial roadmap and with development to understand the details of the content migration.

We designed for curiosity! The new course experience is visual and immersive, spacious and welcoming. A scannable overview and a persistent visual navigation support the linear learner as well as the ‘hunt and gather’ student. We gave a new home to stand-alone techniques in the site nav and backed it up with better curation tools for instructors and more playful discovery interactions for users.