Demme Learning has published Math-U-See from Lancaster, Pennsylvania for three decades. In late 2023 they hired Workhorse to design what came next: the Digital Toolbox, a website to carry it, and a design system underneath both. We delivered a 21-page spec and 17 Figma pages in August 2024. The build paused before launch.
The build paused before launch, so there is no public site to point at. What we handed over was the system: a 21-page spec, 17 Figma pages, and the color, type, and spacing values that the panels further down this page render from directly.
A parent looking for Math-U-See could land on the marketing site, the store, or the software, each on its own domain with its own login. Customers did not experience that as an architecture. They experienced it as getting lost.
At the same time the sales team was opening a second market in charter schools and districts. The brief had two constraints from the first meeting. Do not spend the homeschool trust. Do not build a second site for schools.
2023
Three decades of homeschool trust, and a new buyer in the school administrator. One brand had to hold both without changing its voice between them.
Parents chose Math-U-See because it is hands-on and sequential, and because a person answers the phone. The product had to read like a teacher who shows up, not software that watches.
Charters and districts evaluate at the institutional level. Anything that read as homeschool-only stalled in review before anyone looked at the curriculum.
The same catalog, told two ways, on one information architecture.
Before we drew a screen we wrote down what Demme actually believes about learning, then treated those statements as constraints on the design instead of as language for an About page. Seven principles came out of that work. Four of them changed the product.
Principles
Order matters; a learner earns the next step. This became the lesson-shaped content model in the Digital Toolbox.
The same order, in the catalog: Primer through Zeta, presented in sequence on every subject page.
The adult in the room is the expert. Progress views inform the parent; they never grade them.
The homeschool co-op is a customer in its own right. Community sits at the top level of the navigation.
The rest of the page is these four claims, cashed.
A principle that does not change a screen is decoration.
Voice
Parents are the experts on their own children, so the product supports that authority instead of overruling it. Three guidelines, cut from the book.
Warm · Direct · Trusted
We ran a card sort using the words Demme customers use, not the ones on the org chart. The result was unambiguous. People think in subjects, and they expect one path through reading, buying, and doing the lesson.
So the structure leads with Subjects, Shop as a sibling, and the Digital Toolbox fixed in every navigation state. We mapped it to the section level: eight sections cover twenty-three pages, which is what makes the site cheap to extend and hard to break.
Persona work on a curriculum platform is not demographic. What matters is why someone opened the page, the room they are in when they open it, and how many minutes they get before something interrupts. A parent planning a week of lessons needs a different first screen than a nine-year-old opening one.
We built four. Two of them are the poles of the two-market problem, and they never see the same navigation state.
Audience model
Each persona is three facts: what they came to do, where they are sitting, and how long they have. No biographies. Demme's team keeps the working copies in the brand book at /brand/demme.
Persona · 01
Parent teaching at home
Teaches two or three children across subjects and grade levels, in whatever room fits the activity. Balances teaching against everything else the household needs.
Needs
Pushes back on
Persona · 02
Co-op and tutorial organizer
Runs group instruction in co-op spaces and libraries. Adapts one set of materials to a mixed-age room and reports back to the families who trusted them with it.
Needs
Pushes back on
Persona · 03
Charter, district, and school buyer
Evaluates curriculum at the institutional level against standards, budget, and rollout risk. Arrives skeptical that a homeschool publisher can serve a building.
Needs
Pushes back on
Persona · 04
Student, roughly ages 8 to 14
Opens the lesson during a scheduled learning block, at home or in a classroom. Motivated by seeing the next step arrive and knowing how far along the sequence they are.
Needs
Pushes back on
We mapped the path customers actually took, then redrew it. Four changes did most of the work.
The redraw went through three states: the site as it stood in April, the corrected paths in May, then a reorganization around hubs after a walkthrough surfaced account-type branches we had collapsed too early. The hub model is the one we delivered.
User flows
The catalog is the same object whether or not you have an account.
A podcast episode about fractions reaches the Math-U-See level that covers them.
Purchase and upgrade both terminate in one checkout instead of three.
An existing customer adds to the product without leaving it.
Reading about a subject, buying the book for it, and doing the lesson in it were three websites with three logins. Every crossing between them cost a sign-in and a search.
One path, whether or not you are signed in. The Learning Hub holds all three, so a podcast about fractions reaches the Math-U-See level that covers it, and buying it never leaves the page.
From the delivered user-flow board, Jul 2024
Everything below is the architecture above, drawn. The panels are working components running on Demme’s own colors and type, so resize the window and they reflow.
The real home page, running on Demme’s own colors and type, with the navigation played out across desktop, signed-in, and mobile states. The reel is clicking the real header. Pause it, take over, open anything yourself.
Closed, the header is one white bar over the hero: wordmark, five destinations from the sitemap, Shop, and Account. Everything else is earned by a click.
The subject page is where the sequence principle becomes layout: the crest, the Primer-through-Zeta ladder in order, the free first three lessons, and the placement tool as the primary call.
A complete K-12 curriculum that teaches with manipulatives, video instruction, and a mastery sequence, at home or in the classroom.
Every level builds on the one before it. Students place into the level that matches their mastery, not their grade.
Try the full lesson experience: video instruction, virtual manipulatives, and worksheets. All before you buy. No account required to start.
Students should start at their individual level of mastery. Find the proper placement for your student.
A lesson is a step in a sequence, not a card in a feed, so the portal shows what came before, what this lesson asks for, and what unlocks next. Parent, instructor, and student sign into the same screen, and only the controls change with the role. Orange marks the ones only an instructor sees.
When signed on as an instructor, you will see orange buttons and shaded areas visible only to you.
The orange buttons indicate items to print or Solutions.
The orange-shaded areas include Notes and other important information for instructors, including:
Polynomial long division is useful when a polynomial needs to be broken down into smaller parts. It is also used in some forms of computer programming, such as error-control coding and cyclic redundancy check (CRC) methods.
The Warm Up activates prior knowledge that is related and important to your understanding of the lesson. It is a great way to prepare your mind for what you are about to learn.
Complete the Warm Up in your Lesson Pages. If necessary, See it Solved to check your work.
Design System
Everything above is an argument about how Demme teaches. Below is what that argument produced: four values, a character, three pillars, and one set of color, type, and spacing decisions that both the website and the product read from. One note on scope: Demme already owned its logotype and the "e" monogram, and we did not redraw them. The system sits underneath the identity Demme has used for three decades.
Foundation
What the brand believes, before it says anything.
Descriptor
Homeschool curriculum publisher. Math-U-See. Spelling You See. Building Faith Families.
Founding Belief
Math is learned in sequence. Skip a step and the next one wobbles. The product respects that order.
Demme Learning helps families and schools teach math, language arts, and science with curriculum that meets students where they are. The Digital Toolbox extends those products into a connected portal for parents, instructors, and students.
Values
The operating system. What the brand commits to, every time.
Math is learned in sequence. Skip a step and the next one wobbles. The product respects that order.
Parents are the experts on their own children. The system supports that authority instead of overruling it.
A family that started Math-U-See in second grade should still feel at home in eighth. The brand carries across the arc.
A school administrator should land on the same brand and feel met, not redirected.
Character (Brand Personality)
Five traits that turn values into behavior.
Hands-on
Math-U-See teaches with manipulatives. The product carries that physicality forward in plain language and step-by-step pacing.
Familial
Three decades of homeschool trust did not come from corporate polish. The voice still reads like a teacher who knows your child by name.
Patient
No leapfrogging. Every screen earns the next screen. The architecture reflects that pacing.
Inclusive
Homeschoolers and administrators reach the same shelf. The brand treats both as the actual customers they are.
Brand Pillars (Messaging)
The three things this brand always says. Every piece of work comes back to one of them.
The product promise
Math-U-See works because the lessons stack. The Digital Toolbox carries that logic into software. Every screen is a step, and every step earns the next.
The market promise
A homeschool parent and a school administrator land on the same brand and both feel met. No marketing site for one and a procurement portal for the other. One door, two paths inside.
The voice promise
Demme is a publisher with a portal, not a learning platform with a brand attached. The voice keeps that order. Tools serve the lesson. The lesson never serves the tools.
Color
Blue, green, orange, and violet, held under role names: product screens ask for the role, not the color, so Demme can retune the palette without touching a screen. Orange is the instructor signal, which is why it stays scarce in marketing. The full palette lives in the brand book.
A curriculum publisher writes two kinds of sentence: the lesson a student works through, and the welcome a parent reads once while deciding whether to trust it. Most brands buy a second typeface for the second job and let the two drift.
We gave the work one family and the welcome one face. Inter carries lessons, marketing, buttons, and data rows, so a heading on a Digital Toolbox screen and a heading on a landing page are the same object. Bree Serif appears only where the brand speaks in its own voice. Mono is data alone: timestamps, level indices, prices.
Type
The two ends of the range, in the real faces. The interface and kicker roles between them, and the full scale, live in the brand book.
Every page on the site composes from this library. Each tile is the live component, scaled down; open one to walk through it at full size.
The chrome the pages share. The full pattern library lives in the brand book.
Top bar zero through five, rebuilt as live components. Three is the frame the team tested against: Subjects, Support, and Shop reachable with one thumb while the drawer holds the depth.
Bar closed. Hamburger / search / Demmo wordmark / Login pill, with three quick-access pills below.
Menu reveals the four content shelves and the Digital Toolbox login card. Shop and Support stay on the pills above.
Community expanded: News, Podcast, Events. Vertical guide ties the children to their parent.
Subjects expanded: Math-U-See, Spelling-U-See, WriteShop, Grammar. The working frame for the engagement.
Digital Toolbox expanded: Benefits, Lesson sample, Pricing. The product, reachable from the marketing side.
About Us expanded: Philosophy, History, Careers. The publisher story.
Curriculum first. Software second.
Voice pillar · Design System (Beta), 2024
The system is live
The brand book is spec.json rendered for people: eleven chapters running Heritage through Design System, including the four colors under their role names, the two typefaces, and the eight page sections. Budget ten minutes.
What changed
Before
Three domains, three logins, a second market the brand could not greet, and no design system to hold any of it.
After
One site structure, four personas, and a design system in Figma and in code. Whenever the build resumes, every screen is already drawn and already themed.
Brand stage
Project shape
Vertical
Scope
Duration
Live brand book
Tokens, voice, components, and patterns rendered from the source on disk. The same record powers this engagement, the product, and the agents on stack.
