Redesigning UI: Infinite Campus app

Streamlining parental access to student grades

Summer 2024

Project Overview

My goal was to redesign the UI of the Infinite Campus — the app my children’s school district uses to communicate grades, store transcripts and standardized test scores, and post schedules — with special emphasis on simplifying how parents access student information. With more than 7.5 million students and their parents connected to this app nationwide, Infinite Campus calls itself “the most trusted name in student information.” However, that information is difficult for parents to access, even as multiple studies show that students benefit from their parents being more engaged with their academic progress.

The Problem

Infinite Campus is a treasure trove of information and potential uses, but its overly complicated interface makes for a frustrating user experience. If the goal is for parents to quickly access student information, particularly grades, then the current navigation system lacks an intuitive approach to accessing such important data. Grade alerts go to a generic homepage that is laden with details, but little helpful information. The menu is barely visible and, once selected, offers a slew of topics without organization. The homepage hierarchy prioritizes purchases over academics, even though our district doesn’t use this app for purchases. Announcements are buried and tucked away in various corners of the app.

Screenshots from the existing Infinite Campus UI. The first image shows (left) what users see upon entry into the app. Scrolling ends up in dense communications from the school (center). The hamburger menu results in more uncategorized choices (right).

Selecting from the hamburger menu descends into more uncategorized, jargony choices (left). Tapping on the Account icon doesn’t clear anything up.

The Solution

Determining the scope

Infinite Campus is a robust platform that has tremendous potential to connect parents, students and teachers. Ranging from school spirit merchandise purchases to coordinating transportation details, the app allows school districts and schools a full range of offerings. For this project, I chose to apply the perspective I can relate to most: the parent. By narrowing the scope of the redesign, I could spend more time and attention on the aspect of school that remains a top priority for measuring educational success: Grades.

Creating a persona

I wanted to capture the typical parental experience to help me focus on the right problems to solve. Developing the relatable persona of a 45-year-old suburban working mom of two teenagers was key to visualizing how the IC app is used in real-life scenarios, particularly real-time access to grade updates, and how the app's shortcomings create a frustrating experience for parents. Sarah, like so many of us, wants to know what’s going on with her kids' academic performance so she can support them better. But as a working mom, she doesn’t want to play detective when it comes to how her kids are doing.

Creating the persona of Sarah Thompson, a relatable working mom, helped focus the scope of the project.

Taking a journey

To organize a path forward, I laid out the customer experience along a journey map using UXPressia. Storyboarding the current IC user experience allowed for pinpointing issues along the way and highlighted something I hadn’t really considered at the outset of the project: point of entry. Should the redesign focus on the POE being a push notification, or should it be a cold entry into the app? Since one of the perks of IC is the real-time alerts of new grades, I decided to focus more on alerts as the point of entry.

The journey map highlighted multiple user pain points that impact not only the immediate experience of accessing student information but also the overall learnability of the app. The menu items are uncategorized and often redundant. For example, what is the difference between “Recent Assignment Scores” and “Recent Grade Updates”? For a parent on the go, navigating such redundancies is a waste of time and energy — as indicated by the journey map storyboard and experience (emojis).

The journey map highlights crucial pain points in using the Infinite Campus app. See full-size version.

Brainstorming solutions

Through Emily’s narrative, I tried to go as granular with the experience as possible. Expanding on the details and related emotions of each step helped me think through the questions that came to mind and brainstorm potential solutions. The possibilities were wide-ranging, from making the push notifications more detailed to creating a more intuitive navigation experience.

Some ideas seemed higher priorities than others. For example, creating a more streamlined interface that allows parents to get real-time grade book updates at this present iteration felt more important than allowing parents to customize their notifications.

Building a better experience

Using Figma, I was able to build a prototype a more streamlined UI for the app. I initially built out a version of the homepage that simplified the existing one by offering a series of categories that operated as easy buttons.

First attempt at the new and improved IC app homepage.

I felt the simple buttons and search feature were a step in the right direction. Clicking on My Students, for example, takes parents to a page with their students’ profiles and, from there, grades, attendance, and other details are just a dropdown menu away. I received some helpful feedback that users would likely appreciate the ability to have a way of selecting their favorite categories and make the experience even more efficient. I loved this idea and drew inspiration from apps with similar features.

I also leaned into design conventions, including a hamburger menu, home, email and account buttons, to help with the overall learnability factor.

Still, the crucial point to the prototype — the issue that led me to want to tackle this redesign — was the point of entry. I made sure that the prototype gave users immediate access to the information that is typically flagged in push alerts: grades.

[embed]Figma allowed me to organize user flow, starting from a push notification as the typical entry point.

Results

The redesign of the Infinite Campus app made for a clear, easy-to-use interface that allows parents to access student grades and information effortlessly. Parents can customize their experience by selecting their favorite categories or pages to stay connected in a timely fashion.

It also allows for future iterations to allow additional categories on the homepage menu, such as transportation, medical information, emergency contacts, and other crucial student data. The new Calendar, Purchases, Menu, Notices, and PTO category buttons can be easily built out — or even removed — to fit the needs of any school or school district to make Infinite Campus the one-stop shop for student management.

[embed]Final prototype.