Why did we do this?

When I arrived at Discovery Communications as a design manager, my first mission was to unify two languages ​​that affected a single product: Discovery Kids. The commitment as a product was ambitious and towards a digital renewal at the Latin American level. Although the numbers were positive, the product looked old without much innovation.

What was the challenge?

DKIDS’ presence on TV was enormous among all children and parents in Latin America. Still, they could not capitalize on digital audiences because their web product, especially the app, did not offer significant value to users or interaction and look consistent with a product for children.

Among the expectations of executives and stakeholders was to use the application and the website for future activations and contests and implement technologies to penetrate the market further, such as offline mode and safe areas for parents.

Obstacles

The main challenge for this project was aligning the expectations of executives with a reasonably robust TV background who were unaware of the possibilities, methods, and mindset of a digital operation. This problem required a lot of communication work on the part of the design team, as we had to show concepts, flows, and metrics to support a solution, which sometimes made us slow in the work dynamics.

Opportunities

With the project’s GO, equipment, and installed capacity, paths of technologies that did not exist before could be explored, such as a security wall and user validation. In addition to this, we decided to implement offline experiences, including games, audiobooks, and exclusive series for digital platforms.

Design solution

The solution consisted of 3 main fronts:

• Redesign the application with base functionalities such as parental control, UGC, offline mode, premium content with subscription, interactive content, programming, and events for the family.
• Redesign of the portal for children with the same functionalities of the app except for offline mode
• A TV dissemination campaign to generate traffic and activations in the digital environment and create exclusive web content or content extensions only for users registered in the app.