D2L / 2011-2012
HBS Online Learning Program
Helped HBS students manage demanding academic schedules and instructors plan classrooms; the calendar then scaled into Brightspace's primary scheduling experience for 15M+ learners.
Design Highlights
Overview
Working with D2L’s CEO and customers, I helped translate the company’s learning vision into the Harvard Business School experience.
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
HBS MBA and Executive Education students gained one place to understand deadlines across courses, while instructors could plan seating and classroom participation visually. Calendar sync let learners bring academic commitments into the personal tools they already used. For D2L, the work expanded beyond the original HBS engagement into Brightspace's primary scheduling experience, reaching more than 15 million learners across global deployments.
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.