Classical Conversations

Classical Conversations is an American homeschooling program following the classical education model, emphasizing the trivium stages of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. It offers resources and support to homeschooling families, encouraging critical thinking and effective communication through a structured curriculum focusing on classical literature, history, and other subjects. Notably, the program promotes community engagement, with families participating in local groups called communities to complement home-based learning, and it is located in Southern Pines, NC.

The client approached Big Nerd Ranch with two decade-old internal applications for Classical Conversations operations, lacking a unified user experience and intuitive responsive interface. The goal was to collaborate with the branding company and internal stakeholders to integrate the new Classical Conversations visual brand with product design for the upcoming ProjectOne Platform, aiming to merge both internal applications into a cohesive, accessible, and responsive customer experience. The design team, led by the Head of Product Design, includes Lixin Wang as Senior Product Designer and Bhavik Mistri as Product Designer.

The objective is to modernize Classical Conversations' customer-facing web applications, ensuring a consistent, user-friendly experience for a primarily stay-at-home mom audience, prioritizing mobile-first design while being desktop-friendly. The broader goal is to improve the overall customer journey throughout their engagement with Classical Conversations.

The ProjectOne app, developed on the Material UI framework, unifies the functionality of Classical Conversations' legacy systems, focusing on mobile web applications. It improves customer flows related to enrollment, payment, and teachers' access to quality content for specific classes through a searchable and user-friendly interface.

The project aimed at achieving a unified customer experience prioritizing community engagement, allowing Support Representatives and Account Directors to witness community growth and identify potential thriving communities. This additional functionality, integral to the project's scope, successfully combined two legacy systems into a singular source of truth. Collaboration with various teams within the Classical Conversations organization, including Community, Area, and Tech Support, was crucial. Valuable feedback from team members who were also customers of the product contributed to the project's success, leading to a successful delivery and client launch.