Next Us is an innovative educational platform designed to transform classroom learning through documentary film. The team brought 40+ years of audiovisual expertise, but the platform was still in Alpha with an emerging brand and no clear strategic direction. The organization's ambitions far exceeded its current technical and operational maturity, creating what we identified as strategic fragility.

01 Challenge

How might we align product maturity, community ambition, and long-term vision to build a coherent educational ecosystem?

The goal was to prevent strategic fragility and ensure their global ambitions were grounded in a realistic, sequenced roadmap.

02 Core Problem

While the platform existed and a brand was emerging, there was a profound lack of strategic alignment. Internationalization plans lacked structural grounding, unresolved UX issues in the Alpha version threatened the project's credibility, and the organization's community ambitions far exceeded its current technical and operational readiness.

03 My Role

Head of Research & Strategic Designer

I led the end-to-end research and foresight process, coordinating a team of two researchers. My responsibilities included designing and facilitating collaborative workshops, leading stakeholder mapping and ecosystem analysis, conducting heuristic evaluations of the Alpha platform, and co-creating the 2021–2030 Strategic Roadmap to align leadership around a unified 10-year vision.

04 Impact

Organizational alignment Established a shared language and strategic narrative across the leadership team, reducing internal contradictions.

Product clarity Identified and prioritized critical UX blockers, shifting the focus from adding features to building credibility.

Strategic roadmap Delivered a phased expansion logic that synchronized international growth with technical readiness.

Competitive edge Defined a unique value proposition centered on community-building, distinguishing Next Us from content-only competitors like BBC Teach or DocAcademy.

05 Takeaways

Vision requires sequencing Ambition only becomes actionable when it respects maturity and resources. Without proper sequencing, vision creates fragility.

Designing relationships, not just features Long-term ecosystems are shaped by trust and participation. To design a platform is to design the relationships that live within it.

Foresight as alignment The true value of foresight isn't predicting the future — it's creating a shared mental model of the desired direction.

06 Research & Framing

We structured the investigation into four systemic layers: strategic identity to define purpose, mission, and value proposition; ecosystem mapping to analyze the educational landscape and benchmark global competitors; UX and platform diagnosis using Nielsen's heuristics to bridge ambition and product maturity; and strategic sequencing to redesign the roadmap logic around real-world dependencies rather than aspirational milestones.

07 Key Insights

Community is a product feature The brand promised community, but the Alpha version was a solo experience. Community needed to be operationalized from the very first iteration to remain credible.

Ambition vs. readiness Internationalization was being planned while core navigation was still broken. We pivoted the strategy: strengthen the foundation first to enable sustainable growth later.

Causality over aspiration Strategy must follow a logical flow. Several milestones were being attempted out of order, risking structural collapse.