HUB Scuola — Designing a digital product for education
Craft Meaningful Experiences
Publishing
Mondadori Education
2025
CHALLENGE
Redesign the digital ecosystem HUB Scuola for Mondadori Education, following the acquisition of Deascuola, to merge two separate platforms into a single, accessible, and cohesive experience for teachers, students, and families.
SOLUTION
A complete rethinking of the user experience and interface, built on extensive research with teachers, students, and families. The new HUB Scuola offers a more intuitive, inclusive, and visually engaging experience, supported by a new design system and improved digital accessibility.
IMPACT
A unified platform serving over 3 million users and three major publishing brands, setting a new standard for digital education tools in Italy.
Listening to the school community
The redesign began with an in-depth research phase. Through interviews with teachers, school managers, students, and parents, we gathered insights into their needs and challenges. Teachers’ journeys were analyzed in detail, from the time of the year where they evaluate and choose their textbooks, to the adoption phase and eventually the everyday use, to understand how the platform could better support their teaching and organizational routines.
Adopting such a human-centered research approach has allowed us to identify the users’ expectations regarding ease of navigation, reliability and inclusion, and to guide the entire design process for the new platform.
Redesigning the experience
We reimagined the look and feel of HUB Scuola without losing its recognizable character. The refreshed visual identity features more vibrant, digital-friendly colors, a playful and highly legible typographic duo, and a series of custom, hand-drawn illustrations that make the environment more personal and engaging.
From UX flows to interface design, every section of the platform was redesigned to ensure clarity and consistency, especially for teachers managing digital content across subjects and classes. Special attention was dedicated to digital accessibility, ensuring the platform meets diverse learning needs and aligns with the AA standard of the WCAG’s, among other things.
Design system and technical foundation
To guarantee scalability and coherence, we created a comprehensive design system defining visual principles, iconography, and components. This foundation allows Mondadori Education’s teams to extend and maintain the platform on their own.
Beyond design, we also handled a key part of the development: we built the frontend’s style foundations, which means all future components and development work will automatically pull these standards, ensuring seamless consistency with the visual concept.
Empowering millions of learners
Today, HUB Scuola connects three major publishing brands – Mondadori Education, Rizzoli Education and Deascuola – and supports more than 3 million users, offering teachers and students a unified digital environment for learning, collaboration, and content discovery.
Through a user-centered design process and a renewed visual language, the new HUB Scuola transforms a complex digital ecosystem into a cohesive, accessible, and inspiring experience for all the students and teachers in Italy.
