01 / The context
Three products, no single view.
Professional Growth was built from three core products, each with its own features and its own place in the app. A district might use one, two or all three.
The data an educator generated was spread across them. There was no single source of truth that gathered it, so an individual had to hunt through separate areas to see what they had completed, what was in progress and what was expected next.
The brief was a new front page for the learner: one place that pulls existing data together and might replace the Learning Plan page or the landing page.
3
Core products, with separate features
1
Learner-focused front page
4
Questions the first concept asked
03 / Starting point
Sketches, a benchmark and a loop.
I began with handwritten notes and a look at how LinkedIn Learning’s home page handles goals, top picks and trending courses. Then I drew the idea as a loop an educator moves around: what I did, where I am going, how I get there, what I am doing.
The loop made a real constraint visible: districts can have the learning product, the evaluation product or both, and some older clients have a different pair. Whatever the page showed had to make sense with only some of the data present.
05 / Drafts and critique
We argued with the concept.
The four questions became tiles across the top of the page. I drew them bold and quiet, open and collapsed, then shared them with the wider team and asked for feedback on the styles and on the latest version.
The critique
Clever, but is it clear?
Comments were left as sticky notes on the board. The loudest theme: the four-question idea was charming but made people work harder than a plain label would.
What people said
The concept of these 4 categories seems to overly complicate the concept. “recommendations” is a lot quicker and clear than “How do I get there”.
The questions on the tiles seem a little gimmicky.
“Where” may be repeated too many times.
Not clear that these are selectable.
The user stories that came back
07 / The outcome
Best of 2021.
In February 2022, Frontline announced that Professional Growth had won a Tech & Learning Award of Excellence: Best of 2021. The announcement described My Growth Journey as the product’s latest addition: a learner-focused portal with dashboards of an educator’s professional learning activity and engagement over a career.
Tech & Learning · Awards of Excellence · 2021
Frontline Professional Growth
A panel of educators judged nominees on how well products support different learning environments and student needs, plus value, versatility and ease of use. Frontline also won for Student Health Management in the same program.
In Frontline’s words
Kevin Haugh, Chief Product Officer, Frontline Education
What I took from it
Ask for the argument early
Putting rough drafts in front of colleagues before polishing them surfaced the biggest problem, an overly clever concept, while it was cheap to change.
Plain beats clever
Labels people already understand beat a metaphor they have to decode.
Let the data lead
Sorting content by how often and how much it matters gave the page its order, before any styling.