D2L / 2011-2012
HBS Online Learning Program
Led design of the Brightspace Calendar and Seating Charts for Harvard Business School's MBA and Executive Education programs. The Calendar scaled into a core feature used by 15M+ learners.
Design Highlights
Overview
I led the design of two Brightspace tools for Harvard Business School Online: Calendar and Seating Charts. Built for MBA and Executive Education programs across desktop, iPad, and mobile, Calendar later became the scheduling hub across Brightspace while Seating Charts supported HBS's case-method classrooms.
Challenge
Harvard Business School needed scheduling and classroom management tools that could handle the complexity of MBA and Executive Education programs. Students were juggling deadlines from multiple courses with no unified view — quiz due dates, assignment deadlines, and discussion posts lived in separate tools. Instructors needed a way to manage classroom seating arrangements that supported HBS's signature case-method teaching, where knowing student positions and participation history is critical. Both tools needed to work across desktop, iPad, and mobile since students and instructors moved between devices constantly.
Approach
For Calendar, I designed one scheduling experience that automatically aggregated dates from Quizzes, Assignments, Discussions, and custom events. I added Agenda, Day, Week, Month, and List views, cross-course color coding, iCal sync, and personal tasks. For Seating Charts, I designed configurable visual classroom layouts around instructors' rooms and teaching needs.
Solution
I delivered Calendar with five view modes, automatic cross-course aggregation, color coding, personal task management, and iCal feeds. I designed Seating Charts with drag-and-drop classroom layouts across desktop and iPad. Both tools worked responsively across desktop, tablet, and mobile.
Impact
The Calendar shipped as a core Brightspace feature used across all deployments globally — not just HBS — becoming the primary scheduling interface for 15M+ Brightspace learners. At HBS specifically, the tools supported both MBA and Executive Education programs, giving students a single place to track all deadlines and instructors a visual tool for classroom management. The external sync feature (iCal) became one of the most-used Calendar features, allowing students to integrate academic deadlines into their personal scheduling workflows.
Key Learnings
I learned that aggregation was the real feature: students did not need another calendar, but one place that collected dates scattered across the product. Multiple view modes reflected genuinely different contexts, and iCal adoption showed the value of fitting into existing Google Calendar and Outlook workflows instead of trying to replace them.