Helping Complete PE Turn Discovery Into Direction

Project summary

And Build a Smarter Platform for Teachers

If twenty years of building websites have taught us one thing, it’s this: the more complex the project, the less you can afford to make assumptions. Especially when working with education experts like Complete PE. With thousands of teachers relying on its digital platform every day, our job wasn’t simply to design a website that looked pretty. It was to create a more functional, intuitive teaching tool that would perform for busy educators. And like all successful learning, it starts with asking the right questions.

2024 Key stats

The challenge

A Lesson In Discovery

Complete PE, a longstanding Dock client, is a digital platform that helps schools provide high-quality Physical Education. It provides teachers with units, resources, and tools that make lessons easier to plan, teach, and assess.

By the early summer of 2025, Complete PE felt they’d taken the current system as far as they could and wanted a change. They just didn’t know what that change looked like. So they approached us for help.

After a few initial conversations, we realised that to give them proper advice, we’d have to rethink our usual approach. Where we’d typically deliver an entire project in one go, on this occasion we recommended that Complete PE start with a standalone discovery phase.

We delivered two workshops, one in Liverpool and the other just north of London, producing a detailed functional specification, roadmap, and recommendations based on our findings.

Once Complete PE was armed with our honest advice about what was required for the website rebuild, we told them:

'You don’t need to go with us for the entire build. Feel free to work with another agency.'

Risky? Perhaps. But we’d never recommend something we didn’t believe in.

Besides, the workshops didn't just define the rebuild. They also challenged assumptions, shaped the long-term vision for the platform, and gave everyone confidence in what came next.

Beyond the Brief: The Power of Dock’s Workshops

The solution

Learning From The Experts

We were delighted when Complete PE commissioned us to rebuild the entire website.

But while websites are our bread and butter, this project was different. The platform needed to prioritise functionality over good looks.

Combining our expertise was key. We know websites. Complete PE know teachers. We deliberately leaned into the client’s knowledge, relying on them to explain learning ladders, assessment workflows, and how the end user would actually use the platform.

When we said, “This looks good,” they would tell us, “Yes, but this is how teachers will use it.”

Although we often prioritise function over visuals, the challenge is different when the platform is designed to help teachers assess a group of 40 pupils. It needs to have a lot more thought behind it. Complete PE’s input was invaluable in making sure we got it right.

From unit sections and activities to the success criteria and questions about mobile functionality, we relied on Complete PE to be open and honest, telling us how the website needed to work.

The workshops had set the tone. Everyone felt comfortable challenging ideas because everyone wanted to build something that would work for teachers.

A New Kind Of Prototype

Alongside Complete PE’s knowledge and experience, a new Dock prototype was fundamental to the project’s success.

Where you’d usually create lo-fi, black-and-white wireframes in the first phase, we knew that wouldn’t work as we needed to see where everything sat. Hi-fi designs, however, are time-consuming.

As it was so important for the client to see the website’s functionality, we developed what our Creative Director, Jack, coined as “mid-fi” designs.

Essentially, mid-fi is like hi-fi, but with reduced colours. Complete PE still refer to those mid-fi designs now. They even used them to get feedback from partner schools before we continued developing.

It was a great way of working and kept everyone focused on whether the platform actually worked rather than being preoccupied with colour schemes.

The result

Building With Confidence

Once the mid-fis and the functionality were signed off, we added the colours, shapes, and branding that made everything feel like it belonged to Complete PE.

Then the build began. As with any project of this scale, there were challenges along the way. Complete PE works to the school calendar, meaning there was a hard deadline to hit rather than the more fluid timelines we're often used to.

But because everyone understood the users, the functionality, and the roadmap, we knew precisely what we wanted to achieve. Regular conversations and quick feedback kept the project moving forward, allowing us to refine ideas as the build progressed.

The client is happy, we're happy, and we're excited to see how teachers make the most of the new platform in classrooms worldwide.

We're also looking forward to collaborating on phase two with a client that always challenges our thinking and reminds us why assumptions are no substitute for understanding.