Case study / Product design / Frontline Education

The student, one tap away.

ProgressBook Ohio SIS Mobile gives school administrators the student information they need while they are on the move. The legacy hybrid app opened on announcements and made people hunt for the student. The redesign opens on the school, puts search one tap away and keeps the student in context.

Under construction

Client: Frontline Education
Product: ProgressBook Ohio SIS Mobile
Users: School and district administrators
Scope: Redesign of the mobile app: home, search, student profile, attendance, schedule, menu and settings
Status: Under construction. Screens shown are work in progress.

The first two phones scroll on their own. Hover to pause.

01 / The context

A student record, on a small screen.

The ProgressBook SIS Admin mobile app lets school administrators look up the essentials about a student without going back to a desk: a picture, contacts, alerts, schedule, attendance, discipline and grades.

The first version was a hybrid app. Its landing page was a wall of announcements and how-to’s, and the most visited page, student search, sat behind a menu. The redesign for Frontline Education treats the app as a tool for a quick, specific question: who is this student, and is there anything I should know?

The work is still in progress, so this page shows the design as it stands, with the open questions still on the board.

Tabs: Menu, Search and Home

Student in context at a time, named right in the menu

Student sections one tap from the menu

02 / Starting point

What the legacy app taught us.

Before drawing anything new, I annotated the legacy app’s screens. The board asked questions about the landing page, search and the way a student carries from screen to screen.

The landing page was not the destination

It carried announcements and how-to’s, while the most visited page was student search. The question on the board: make Student Search the main focus?

Two searches for one job

Student Search and Advanced Search lived on separate screens. The board asked whether they could become one.

Context got lost

Opening a student’s profile, then going to the menu, offered no hint of who you were looking at. A “No Student in Context” note became a design problem.

Questions kept on the board

Can only one student be in context at a time?

And when does the student leave context: after log-off, or after some period of time?

Who edits the landing page content?

Users, admins, both or neither? The answer decides whether announcements belong on Home.

What else are they searching for?

Students come first, but the board also pointed at discipline incidents and other record types.

Is there room for an alphabet quick-scroll?

A long results list asked for a way to jump, and an accessibility note asked for white text on the colored header to be checked.

03 / Home

Open on the school, not the announcements.

Home now starts with a search field and the school the person works in, then answers the questions that come up first in a school day.

Search, right on top

The most visited task is the first thing on the screen.

The school at a glance

Teacher, student and facility counts under a school selector for people who work in more than one building.

The things you would otherwise hunt for

A Report Discipline Incident button, the next in-service day and today’s student birthdays.

Home, scrolled by itself. Hover to pause.

04 / Search

One search, with filters.

Search becomes a tab of its own and answers the legacy board’s “Merge?” note. A person starts from the students they looked at recently, or types a name. Filter chips narrow the result to a type of record.

Search with recent students shown as photos or initials and a search by name field — Start from recent students. People with no photo get their initials.

Typing Haney in search with two matching students and the keyboard open — Results arrive as you type, with grade, gender and age.

Search with chips for Student, Teacher and Discipline Incident above the results — Type filters sit under the search field. Student is selected here.

The legacy board asked, “What else are they searching for?” The chips are my answer so far: Student, Teacher and Discipline Incident. The last chip is still a placeholder while we learn which other searches deserve one.

05 / Menu and context

The menu knows who you are looking at.

With no student selected, the menu is short: Search, Bell Schedule, Help and Settings. Pick a student and the menu grows to include their name, a Switch link and seven sections about them.

Before: the legacy menu

Now: two states of one menu

Menu with no student selected: Search, Bell Schedule, Help and Settings — No student in context.

A student in context.

Getting in

Sign in, settings and the school year.

The sign-in screen carries the StudentInformation name and a Switch link for the district. Settings keeps what a person sets once: default school, school year and Log Out.

06 / Student profile

What you need to know, in the order you need it.

The legacy profile was a long, even list. The new one leads with the person and anything urgent, then everything else in order of how often it is asked about.

The profile scrolls in two stops. Hover to pause.

Who, and what to watch for

Name, grade, gender, language, age, date of birth and ID sit beside the photo. Alert chips for medical and fee notes sit right under it, where they can’t be missed.

How to reach them

Address with one-tap email and phone buttons, then the counselor and home room.

Where they are right now

Bus, parking, today’s attendance and the class in session, so the answer to “where is this student?” is on the first screens.

The rest of the record

GPA and lowest grade, primary contact, the last discipline incident and the full schedule.

When there is a lot to say

Every alert, still readable.

A student can have several alerts at once. The profile grows to hold them, the header stays pinned as you scroll, and each alert expands to its detail. The tab bar never moves.

A student with every alert. Hover to pause.

Alerts expanded.

Dark mode, designed with the light version.

07 / Attendance and schedule

The answers behind the row.

Each summary row on the profile opens to its full story. Attendance starts with today and goes back through tardies, unexcused absences and truancy. The schedule lists each class with its grade and days, and marks the one in session.

Attendance screen with a Present row for today and the message No Absences Reported For The Current Time Period — An empty state says so plainly: no absences for the period.

Attendance screen listing a tardy, two unexcused absences and a truancy with dates — Tardies, unexcused absences and truancy, newest first.

Schedule screen with six classes, their rooms, teachers, grades and days; the current class is highlighted and marked Present — The class in session is highlighted and marked Present.

08 / Still being built

What is on the board next.

This case study will grow as the app does. The next piece is discipline: the legacy app has a full incident flow, and the new Home already puts a Report Discipline Incident button on the first screen.

Under construction

Discipline incidents

Rethinking the multi-step entry flow shown above: participant type, offender details, infractions and actions, and the confirmation.

More search filters

Deciding which record types deserve a chip beyond Student, Teacher and Discipline Incident.

Context rules

Settling when a student leaves context, and what the alert and contact screens do when there is none.