“The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring."
- Paul Rand
In the fall of 2020, the Toronto District School Board released TDSB Connects, an app designed to help merge virtual assets with in-person learning.
I hated it.
It was just too basic.
In September of 2020, every student that was a part of the TDSB was forced to use the Connects app to check their timetables (because an email was too advanced??).
That first week of September was the absolute worst. We got our timetable the day before classes were supposed to start, and the large traffic of people led to the app crashing… for hours. The worst part? It looked like this:
Someone needed to fix it.
Furious, I decided that this would be an opportunity to try and make something that was more elegant, clean, and most importantly, useful. Redesigning the app isn't just to offer a better experience but to align Connects with the TDSB's Multi-Year Strategic Plan.
This would join with the interests of the app's end-user, the students. The TDSB's Multi-Year Plan outlines five large-scale objectives and redesigning Connects aims to align with two of them. The objectives outline Creating a culture for staff and student well-being and building effective relationships and partnerships within school communities to enable that to happen.
New Brand Identity
It all begins with a new logo. Simple enough, this new brand identity follows a more uniform and modern approach for Connects; a singular "t" signifying our city and 3 dots that complete the entirety of the TDSB colour scheme but also form the peace sign that signifies the board's inclusivity and forward-thinking approach to education.
Features for students, by students.
Making it Simple.
After a month into school, I asked my peers what they’d want to see in Connects, and it all revolved around a new interface. The Connects app had too many barriers to entry to access basic information, so with this redesign, I wanted to make information visibility the prime focus.
This new dashboard layout resembles how news apps would display information; When you look at an article, the headline gives you most of the story while giving you the ability to click through and get specific details. Similarly, this new homepage shows 90% of the information a student would need while letting them click through to further elaborate on the given information.
Cards
This new design will enable teachers to easily convey day-to-day information in the form of Cards which are adopted from social media apps like Instagram and Snapchat. The reason this format works so well in this scenario is that for our generation, this interface is almost second nature and it's a great medium for relaying information in the short term.
For school administration, announcements are displayed right on the dashboard of the homepage which not only allows for less repetitive announcements but ensures that students are up to date on each and everything. This is especially more convenient than the use of email which for most of us, is slow and outdated.
This new announcement page is also for the board and provincial Ministry of Education which is going to completely change how students get information; many of us get information through social media, and the problem is, school isn't very integrated into our social media feed; word of mouth is how the majority of the student body gets information and that can be misleading and wrong sometimes, which can create a lot of confusion; this new announcement page will ensure students get up to date, reliable information as soon as they are available, straight from the source.
At a Glance
On the home screen, a new Your Day widget will always be present. This new "at a glance" widget dynamically changes to provide a student's schedule, date, and time of classes for any given day. Potentially this can integrate well with both Android and iOS as a standalone widget on a student's home screen.
E-IDs
E-IDs are going to be a hassle-free way to get access to the school. They are digitized Student Cards that aren't to replace physical cards but have as a backup when a student forgets to bring theirs into school. These E-IDs would potentially work within a library setting for checking out books and other material. It would be convenient to have them integrate within something like the wallet app and have an NFC version of a student card that is both more practical and secure.
This design was inspired by my Card design in Transit+
Contact Page
This new app screen enables both households and school administration to connect. On this page, students and parents can sign an absentee form that uses 2-factor authentication, allowing parents to permit the form to be submitted to the school. The new Contact system would dramatically cut down time for both parents and administration. Additionally, students can directly contact their guidance counsellors and teachers straight from this page.
Teachers
The Teachers page lets students see which teachers they have for a given semester and have all their necessary contact information and room numbers. Potentially, we can integrate Zoom and Google Classroom within the app allowing for automatic syncing with online classes.
You
The You page is the student's profile within the app; students can find all updated marks, teacher contacts, volunteer hours and attendance records. Potentially, this page can integrate with Trillium and Mark-book to automatically sync with a student's grade for a given subject so that the mark is always up to date.
In short, this project taught me that good design goes a long way in improving basic functionality.
I’m working with the development team to make the current Connects app closer to my design, and I hope that by the end of it, students won’t have to go through the same thing my classmates and I went through on that dreadful day back in 2020.