Ryan Brock

DIY



DIY is an awesome community for kids with a huge library of learning content, hands-on projects, and live workshops. Kids share photos and videos with each other, learn from real mentors, and track their progress over time.


While leading design at DIY, we worked through multiple product cycles and experiments. I enjoyed designing a first-of-its-kind community experience, focusing on social features, learning content, and safety.


Product Design

UX Design

Web Design

Branding

Illustration


2013 – 2015

With more 100 skills to learn, with over 1000 project challenges, kids could earn real patches for submitting photos and videos of themselves learning new things with the community.


The core product was iOS, with more features available on the web for kids and parents separately. We designed useful creation tools like in-camera editing, stop motion capture, and collaboration features.


Much of the learning material on DIY is focused on time away from the screen – outdoors, on the go, playing, and experimenting. The biggest indicator of success for us was seeing kids clearly learning new things and making progress on their profiles over time.

After learning so much from our awesome free community, we set out to try a new way for kids to learn directly from our full-time skill mentors.


The result was a new app called DIY Camps. From claymation to space exploration, kids could join a virtual camp every month. Project ideas and challenges were posted daily, with friendly mentors available to share feedback and encouragement via asynchronous video.

Kids have varying levels of exposure to technology. Our approach to evolving the visual identity and interaction design was minimalistic, to emphasize the content and functionality as visually as possible.


This cultivated a fun, accessible, and approachable experience that appealed to kids of all ages.

Design Lead

Ryan Brock


Senior Designer:

Hartley Miller


Creative Directors / Patch Illustrations:

Isaiah Saxon + Daren Rabinovitch