TINKERCAST
WORDPRESS SITE DEVELOPMENT
Bringing WOW to the world of children’s education is a mission that both FableVision and their client, Tinkercast, share.
Tinkercast brings award-winning podcasts, books, and other educational materials to the masses with 6 unique series. In an effort to improve the delivery of their content library and bring new teacher resources to the forefront, FableVision was tapped to redesign their website. We were thrilled to produce this website alongside FableVision, pairing their knowledge and experience in the podcast industry with our UX and web production know-how.
Keep scrolling to see how the site came together!
THE PROCESS
USER EXPERIENCE &
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
As with all web projects, we began with an in-depth journey into user experience and site architecture. This site presented 3 interesting UX challenges:
Hundreds of podcast episodes needed to be served up to users with an emphasis on exploration.
A bevy of resources - some parent and family focused, others teacher focused - needed to be quickly explained to the user, with the ability to purchase memberships to gain access to them.
With 4 distinct user types between the various membership options, the correct content needed to be built and served to each.
We worked closely with the Tinkercast team to better understand their audience and customers, and applied this information to create a clean, clear architecture. Additionally, self-service and exploration is greatly encouraged with the use of strategic CTAs and recommended content. Lastly, new members are enticed via previews of exclusive content, such as the Podjects made available to TinkerClass members.
Development
This project yielded one of the more exciting design processes. While we always strive for organized content and future-forward aesthetics, Tinkercast had the added benefit of possessing a fun, lighthearted brand identity. Various characters and cartoons are used throughout their educational materials, and we were able to make use of these assets on the site for a truly unique look and feel.
Once this look was agreed upon, detailed designs were produced. This included some of the few templated page structures, such as podcast collections, as well as miscellaneous blocks and modules.
The design itself is modular in nature. While full page templates have their place, we tend to think of the individual page sections as blocks. This grants us two immediate advantages:
From a design perspective, we can hammer out the look and feel, but don’t necessarily need to have each page’s structure mapped out in advance.
This leads directly into the next benefit, which is the ease of evolution. The client is not constrained by locked templates that require a developer to adjust. At any moment, new pages and whole site sections can be produced using a library of blocks - each of which is tailored to the organization’s brand identity.
VISUAL DESIGN
The site itself utilizes WordPress, specifically their Gutenberg editor. As mentioned above, we always recommend a modular approach to page-building to allow for maximum flexibility. Combined with Gutenberg’s existing library of basic page-building blocks, the custom blocks produced during our design phase can be inserted and rearranged on pages and posts at will.
A staging site was produced to allow for content entry and functional QA ahead of our formal launch. After a few rounds of revision and review with Tinkercast’s stakeholder team, we successfully launched the site in September, 2023. Additionally, two feature rollouts occurred in the Spring of 2024.
