NBS

Designing an accessible video experience that helps older adults discover, navigate, and participate in dance programs with confidence.

Overview

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Canada’s National Ballet School set out to redesign its digital dance experience for older adults, creating a platform where users could easily discover and participate in on-demand and live dance classes.

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The UX -UI challenge went beyond creating a video library. The audience included users with different mobility needs, language preferences, visual needs, and levels of digital confidence. Some users were comfortable navigating digital products independently, while others needed support with fundamental interactions such as playing a video, entering fullscreen mode, or recovering a password.

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From a UX/UI perspective, the project focused on reducing cognitive load, simplifying content discovery, and creating clear paths into the experience. Rather than exposing users to a large catalog of choices, the platform was structured around a small number of meaningful decisions that progressively guided users toward relevant classes.

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The result was an accessible and personalized video experience designed around how this specific audience discovers content, makes decisions, and builds confidence with digital tools.

Key Services Provided

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Role: Lead Product Designer (UI Lead & UX Governance)

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I led the UX/UI design direction for the platform, overseeing the experience from discovery and information architecture through interface design, validation, documentation, and implementation.

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As Lead Designer, I worked directly with stakeholders and the development team to translate business requirements and user needs into a clear product experience. I also guided and reviewed the UX work produced by other designers, ensuring that user flows, interaction patterns, and interface decisions remained aligned with the overall product strategy, accessibility requirements, and design system.

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My responsibilities included:

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UX/UI Design Leadership
UX Strategy & Experience Direction
Design Review and UX Quality Assurance
Information Architecture
User Flow and Interaction Design
Accessibility Design
UI Design and Design System Direction
Prototyping and Experience Validation
Stakeholder Collaboration
Design-to-Development Handoff
Direct Collaboration with Developers
Implementation Review and Design QA

The Challenge

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The main UX challenge was designing a streaming experience for an audience with a particularly wide range of digital confidence and accessibility needs.

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The existing experience exposed users to multiple rows of video content at once. Through stakeholder discovery, we learned that this could make finding a class difficult and overwhelming. The goal was not to add more ways to browse, but to reduce unnecessary decisions and help users reach relevant content faster

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At the same time, the experience needed to support users with different mobility preferences, program goals, and language needs without creating a complicated filtering system. NBS specifically wanted to avoid over-classifying content because too many options could make decision-making harder for the audience.

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The UX also needed to account for fundamental usability barriers. During discovery, the NBS team described situations where users required assistance with actions as basic as pressing Play or entering fullscreen mode. This reinforced the need to make core interactions explicit, recognizable, and easy to access.

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The key UX challenges were:

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Reducing cognitive load during content discovery
Designing for a wide range of digital literacy
Supporting seated and standing participation
Supporting English and French content
Making video controls and key actions highly visible
Creating simple pathways through progressive programs
Supporting returning users migrating from an existing platform
Simplifying registration, login, and password recovery
Balancing personalized recommendations with user control
Creating an accessible experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile
Designing an intuitive CMS experience for the NBS team

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Goals

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User Goals

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The UX strategy focused on helping users:
Find an appropriate class without navigating a large content library
Understand whether a class matched their mobility preferences
Choose between shorter and progressive programs
Access content in English or French
Easily understand how to start and control a video
Continue a progressive program without searching for the next class
Save and return to preferred content
Discover live events and recommended activities
Access support when they encounter problems
Adjust accessibility preferences such as text size and contrast

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Business Goals

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Create a scalable video experience for the older adult program
Improve participation and continued engagement
Support content discovery through personalized preferences
Allow NBS to curate recommendations rather than relying only on automated suggestions
Simplify video and event management for internal teams
Provide visibility into engagement and video performance
Support the migration of existing users
Create stronger connections between participants and the broader NBS community.

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Product Design Approach

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As Lead UX/UI Designer, I guided the product design process from discovery through implementation. My role involved defining the experience direction, reviewing UX flows and design decisions across the team, and working directly with developers to ensure that the intended experience was translated accurately into the final product.

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The design process began with stakeholder discovery to understand the audience, existing pain points, content structure, and the ways older adults interacted with the program. These insights informed the information architecture and helped the design team focus on reducing cognitive load, improving accessibility, and simplifying content discovery.

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Throughout the project, I reviewed the UX work developed by other designers, helping maintain consistency across user journeys and ensuring that decisions remained grounded in the needs identified during discovery. I also worked closely with developers throughout implementation, reviewing interactions, responsive behavior, accessibility considerations, and design consistency.

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UX Solutions

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Guided Class Discovery ‍

Instead of presenting the entire video catalog immediately, the experience used progressive disclosure to help users make one decision at a time.The discovery flow focused on duration, mobility, and language, allowing the interface to reduce the number of irrelevant options before presenting content.

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This transformed content discovery from:

‍Browse everything → compare → decide

into:

‍Express a preference → see relevant options → choose a class

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The approach responded directly to stakeholder feedback that showing all available content at once could feel overwhelming and make it harder for users to decide what to watch.

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Accessible Video Experience - the video page was designed around the most important task: helping users start and complete a class successfully. Discovery revealed that even familiar video-player conventions could not be assumed to be universally understood. For that reason, key actions such as Play and Fullscreen were considered as explicit interface actions rather than relying exclusively on controls embedded within the video player.

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Progressive Learning Paths - the experience supported both independent classes and structured progressive programs.For progressive programs, the UX needed to clearly communicate sequence and progression. Instead of forcing users to return to search after completing a class, the interface could surface the appropriate next class while still requiring an intentional action from the user. This was particularly important for a physical activity platform: recommendations needed to encourage continued participation without automatically playing another long dance class or encouraging overexertion.

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Curated Recommendations - recommendations were designed as a balance between personalization and editorial control. User preferences helped surface relevant content, while NBS retained control over daily recommendations, live events, and suggested next classes. This allowed the platform to create a personalized experience without depending entirely on algorithmic recommendations.

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Accessible Account Experience - the discovery process identified password recovery as one of the most significant recurring pain points. Users could become blocked when password reset emails were missed or sent to junk folders, creating frustration and additional support requests.

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Familiar Event Discovery - a calendar experience was explored as a familiar way for users to discover live classes, events, and recommended activities. The design considered the different contexts in which a calendar works well. On larger screens, users could understand events within a broader calendar structure, while smaller screens required a more focused presentation to preserve readability and avoid compressing information into an inaccessible interface.

Solutions

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Rather than exposing users to a large catalog of videos, I helped design a guided discovery experience that progressively narrowed content based on a few meaningful decisions—class duration, mobility level, and language preference. This reduced cognitive load and made finding the right class feel significantly less overwhelming for older adults.

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Accessibility influenced every stage of the experience, not just typography and contrast. We simplified navigation, made critical actions highly visible, improved account flows, and reduced unnecessary complexity to support users with different levels of digital confidence and physical ability.

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Research revealed that some users struggled with fundamental digital interactions, such as playing videos or navigating fullscreen mode. The interface was designed to build confidence through familiar interaction patterns, clear affordances, and explicit guidance rather than assuming prior technical knowledge.

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Instead of treating every class as an isolated video, the experience organized content into structured learning journeys. Users could easily continue progressive programs while still maintaining control over what they watched next, encouraging long-term engagement without creating unnecessary friction.

Outcomes

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The final experience transformed a complex content ecosystem into a guided and accessible digital experience designed specifically around the needs of older adults.

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From a UX/UI perspective, the project established a clearer relationship between user needs, content architecture, and interface behavior.

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The resulting experience:

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Reduced the number of decisions required to discover a class
Created clearer pathways between independent and progressive programs
Supported different mobility preferences without creating a complex navigation system
Made fundamental video interactions more explicit
Integrated accessibility into navigation, account flows, and content discovery
Balanced personalization with NBS-curated recommendations
Connected on-demand content with live events and community participation
Created a manageable content structure for internal teams
Established a scalable foundation for future program growth

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The project demonstrates how accessibility can shape the entire product strategy—not only typography, contrast, and component design, but also information architecture, content strategy, interaction patterns, and the number of decisions users are asked to make.

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UX Scope & Complexity

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8 Content Pathways

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A flexible class system designed around duration, mobility needs, and language, allowing users to follow a 6-week progressive program that fits their needs.

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33 User Stories

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The platform was shaped around 33 user stories covering 5 different user roles, from older adults and activity coordinators to content managers and administrators.

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