FutureLearn
What was the challenge?
Unthinkable’s relationship with the online learning platform FutureLearn — now Europe’s biggest provider of massive open online courses (MOOCs) — began in December 2012, before a single page was designed or line of code was written. Their founding CEO, Simon Nelson, turned to us to develop the initial vision and define the proposition for the platform.
Unthinkable have been the driving force behind the development of FutureLearn from idea to first public launch. They facilitated and shaped the initial strategy development, led the stakeholder consultation and management process, supplied and hired the initial product development team and then stepped in to manage key business priorities during the set up phase. I hired them because I trusted their editorial, strategic and operational judgement and they have repaid this faith many times over. I cannot recommend them highly enough.
Simon Nelson, Founding CEO, FutureLearn
How did we approach it?
We worked with FutureLearn’s founding partner and owner, the Open University, and the highly-ranked universities who were its first partners, to develop what would become the touchstone document for the development of the platform: a Platform Vision that described what FutureLearn wanted to be, and what it would promise its users. Central to this was a 50-word articulation of FutureLearn’s product vision which we believe is as true a decade and 20 million users later as it was then. The document also set out guiding principles for market positioning, audience targeting, user experience, revenue models and product design principles, as well as system models illustrating how users would interact with content, experiences and other users.
Notably, Unthinkable defined for FutureLearn two principles that would become key differentiators for the product — a mobile-first approach to the design of both content and platform, and the idea of social learning.
In parallel, we created a delivery plan and helped to hire the first product team for FutureLearn. We were determined to embed the culture and working practices of a startup, in keeping with the governance structure that the Open University had put in place for the company. This meant carefully negotiating the technical and product legacy of the Open University, and drawing from the best that the OU’s people and experience had to offer, while holding fast to a solution that would deliver to the product vision in the time available. That solution was a bespoke build in Ruby on Rails built within an agile product management framework, informed by the OU’s expertise in security and quality assurance.
We continued to manage the build on the OU’s behalf through to the launch of a minimum viable product, shipping the first working prototype within weeks of the project starting and launching a private alpha within our target deadline of six months. FutureLearn’s public launch came three months later, in autumn 2013.
A year later, FutureLearn was named Startup of the Year at the British Interactive Media Association Awards (BIMAs). In 2015, FutureLearn was nominated for a Webby in the Social Media category. In November 2015, FutureLearn won Best User Experience (Education) at the UXUK Awards, as well as the overall grand prize for Best User Experience.
As FutureLearn continued to develop through the 2010s, Unthinkable helped to incubate a number of capabilities at the company, including commissioning and briefing the agency (Wolff Olins) that created the FutureLearn brand, setting up and running initial content and partner operations, developing the company’s content strategy, developing in-house learning design and production resources, and managing the 2020 launch of FutureLearn’s Microcredentials.
Throughout our relationship with FutureLearn, we also helped recruit and support a number of new strategic partners. For example, we steered FutureLearn’s contribution as a founding partner of the Institute of Coding, as well as producing a number of courses as part of the Institute, winning a Gold Award from QS’s Reimagine Education.
And working with Samsung as a FutureLearn partner, we provided strategic and production support and helped them design a whole new learning proposition and scale up from their physical training model, helping them win the Gold Award for best CSR activity or programme to support or develop a corporate reputation at the Global Good Awards 2021.
We’ve designed and produced online courses for many other FutureLearn partners over the years, from sectors as diverse as pharmaceuticals, higher education and global charities.
