linked School App
Role
UX / UI Designer, Content Designer
Collaborators
none - sole designer
Duration
2 weeks
Tools
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Company
Liberty University
Problem
vital info gets lost in frequent emails & messaging apps
Covenant families receive weekly emails with event and school updates, links to documents to refer to or fill out, notifications from classroom chats, etc. The calendar lives on the school website, and is tedious to use. Keeping up with everything for your student(s) is time consuming and exhausting. How can we make the lives of parents and students easier with streamlined communication?
Solution
a singular communication hub for the whole school
The app will have a main landing page with a virtual bulletin board showing announcements and event cards updated weekly. There will be an integrated school calendar so parents don’t have to find the document with all the school dates on the website, and a links page with things that get updated often like lunch order forms.
Process
a common thread
After interviewing 7 parents of children at 3 different schools, I discovered efficient communication was a common issue.
objectives
increase school-wide engagement
reduce paper waste by creating an app that can be adopted and customized by individual schools
make interactions more efficient and organized
persona 1
Amy is a stay at home mom with two kids in school. She is a member of the school PTO and feels overworked by a lack of involvement from other parents. Filling in the gaps of the school’s needs with volunteers and helping coordinate fundraising efforts is a big part of her role. She receives a large amount of information from multiple sources and has a difficult time keeping track of it all. Both her kids bring home papers from school with important communications from the teachers about events, field trips, and their behavior each day. She wants to free up time spent on communication and volunteer efforts so she can enjoy more with her family.
Can’t keep track of all the papers her kids bring home every day
Difficulty determining which information is meaningful and useful in a sea of messages
The school calendar is inconvenient to access and subject to change. It is currently delivered in a pdf format via email. It’s easy to forget important dates unless you manually add everything to your calendar.
persona 2
Sophia Clark is a mother of three, with her oldest in school full-time and the little ones in preschool. She is a working mother and is always seeking ways to improve time efficiency and organization so life doesn’t feel so crazy. She feels overwhelmed, disconnected and uninformed. Keeping up with the great number of messages delivered from different sources “feels like a full-time job”. Her pain points with current school communications:
Email is the main communication method, and she receives on average 100 emails a day from various sources. School emails get lost in her inbox.
Emails with repetitive information. She has to read through the full email each week to see what has been added or removed.
Newsletters, forms, and behavior charts from teachers come home in her child’s folder daily and get lost
The school calendar is difficult to access
Scattered messages about upcoming events at the school, pictures from field trips, invitations, etc. come through in a messaging app from other parents in her child’s class
competitive analysis
After researching apps that currently exist which could fill the communication gap, I determined that there is still a great opportunity in this niche due to lack of essential features that would address key user pain points. There is not one app that checks all the boxes.
blue [yes]
yellow [no]
grey [undetermined]
After testing these apps further, there was great room for improvement in areas such as clean UX/UI and engineering. I ran into dead ends within Klassly, and the app crashed 3 times in 2 minutes.
mind mapping
user flow
mood board & inspiration
a note about scope creep
This project has the potential to be a huge undertaking with two sides to consider and limited time. The parent-facing side of the app, as well as the administration / faculty side. For this use instance, we are only taking into consideration the parent side. If we decide to pursue this product further, we will explore the administration-facing side.
After successfully logging in, users will see a dashboard with vital information up front such as school announcements and upcoming events. Icons along the bottom allow one tap access to other main features of the app including the calendar, messages, student profiles, and class bulletin boards.
wireframes
low-fidelity prototype
I refined my ideas and determined what homepage layout would be the best fit.
Once logged in, users are directed to the homepage from which they can access every feature with a simple tap of the icons at the bottom. Users are welcome to filter through the feed and sort by post type, or use the search bar at the very top of the screen. A convenient light/dark mode toggle sits at the top left, providing easy access for those with low vision or for night time use.
A carousel of upcoming events sits at the top of the page. One tap on an event leads directly to the event details page.
high-fidelity prototype
My Student
Track your student’s attendance and academic progress with infographs.
Quickly request a late arrive for a doctor’s appointment. Notify the school and teachers of an absence due to illness or a vacation.
My Classes
A virtual bulletin board for teachers.
Keep up to date with what’s happening in your children’s classrooms in one spot.
Access photo albums from class events such as field trips.
Book a Meeting
Effortlessly schedule a meeting with teachers.
Select which teacher from the drop down menu at the top. Their availbility will appear in the calendar. Choose a date, meeting type, and a time slot.
Messaging
Message other parents straight from the app.
You are automatically added to the group chat for your child’s classroom.
At a glance identification – easily see whose guardian or parent you’re chatting with.
Directory of school contacts and filter by grade.
Calendar
Quickly see what events are scheduled for the day– from althetic games, meetings, programs, and more.
Events
Review and save upcoming events
Add events to your external calendar
RSVP
Sign up to volunteer at an event
Give funds to sponser an event
Reflection
I've had a lot of time to think about what feautures this app needs to make the lives of its users easier. What originally started as a school project for my Interaction Design I class, became a passion project. Since the project began in 2021, I have talked with more of the core audience and discovered additional frustrations and use cases. The image here for “linked Covenant” was an app for a single school, with less usability. I’ve re-designed the original app and expanded the use cases to include many schools.
I will continue to work on the design, create an interactive prototype, and test with users. My dream is for the app to become a reality and make the lives of parents and guardians infinitely easier.
