Illumine (Mobile App)

Redesigning Communication Between Parents and Teachers for Better Engagement

About Illumine

Illumine is a cloud-based management platform for childcare, preschools, daycares, nurseries etc. Its goal is to streamline daily operations (attendance, billing, scheduling), improve parent-teacher communication, my primary goal was to enable seamless communication between parents and teachers. The existing app, built six years ago, had accumulated several disconnected features over time, resulting in a fragmented experience. I led the complete redesign to unify these features, simplify navigation, and create a cohesive, user-friendly platform.

Problem

During our monthly catch-ups with childcare centers, we learned that teachers and support staff often struggle with the app. Many of them are not highly tech-savvy, and entering detailed daily schedules is difficult and time-consuming. Since most of their time is spent actively managing children in classrooms, they have little opportunity to sit and update the app.

Instead of adding to support staff workload, the app needs to reduce manual effort and streamline routine tasks.

Business Goals

While designing, we ensured that fulfilling the business goals was a top priority.

Research & insights

I’ve broken it into phases of a teacher’s daily interaction with the app

  • Check-in students - Teachers mark students’ attendance at the start of the day, ensuring accurate tracking from the very beginning.
  • Messages - Communicate with parents or staff during the day through in-app messages.
  • Upload photos - Share classroom activities or moments with parents.
  • Update daily notes - Add quick notes about student progress, behavior, or reminders.
  • Activity post - End-of-day summary of class activities for parents.
  • Check-out students - Mark students leaving at the end of the day.
  • Daily report - The system automatically emails parents a detailed report after the teacher logs each day’s activities.
  • Weekly lesson template - Every Friday, teacher uploads the lesson plan for the next week.
  • Calendar updates - Add holidays, events, and important activities to the shared calendar.

Information Architecture

Completely restructured the app’s IA to improve navigation and usability, providing multiple access points for activity creation and streamlined task management.

Decisions

After collecting user pain points and my own observations, I’m now ready to move forward with wireframes. I’ve documented all the suggested improvements and combined them with my insights to create rough drafts. I experimented with various versions, exploring different layouts and element placements. This is part of my process, ensuring the final product offers the best user experience and an intuitive, easy-to-use solution.

Dashboard

Quick Links - Introduced Quick links for most used features

Staff Check-In / Check-Out - Enables staff to conveniently record their attendance through the app.

Search at Your Fingertips - A powerful global search that helps you quickly access everything you need.

Attendance Widget - Displays the most relevant details: Present, Absent, and Pending, helping teachers track attendance quickly and effortlessly.

Activities - Easily accessible through Quick Links, Widgets, and the Main Navigation for a seamless user experience.

Smart Reminders - The system automatically identifies and highlights important actions, such as notifying you if no tasks have been assigned in recent days.

Parent–Staff Communication Made Easy - All parent concerns, messages, and notes are organized in one convenient place.

Photo - Activity

AI Writing Assistance - Effortlessly convert audio to text, refine it using AI writing support, and translate it into your preferred language for convenience.

Audio to Text -Teachers can record audio that’s automatically converted to text, greatly reducing their writing workload and saving valuable time.

Food - Activity

Split Menu - A frequently used feature that allows entering different quantities for each food item with ease.

Flexible Entry Options - Allows entering details for both individual students and combined student groups.

Students / Self Attendance

Attendance - Allows managing three types of attendance directly from the dashboard: Self, Staff, and Students.

Parents Note - While selecting students, staff can view parents' notes and plan the day accordingly, ensuring personalized care and better coordination.

Real-Time Attendance Widget - Helps staff instantly see how many are Present, Absent, and Pending, ensuring quick and accurate attendance tracking.

Results

Teacher Efficiency: Streamlined daily routines reduced manual effort by 50%, allowing teachers and support staff to focus more on classroom activities rather than app entry.

Task Management: AI-assisted features like audio-to-text, translation, and editing reduced teachers’ writing workload by 40%, saving significant time on daily documentation.

Navigation & Usability: Redesigned dashboard with Quick Links, Attendance Widget, and easy access to Activities improved task completion speed by 35%.

Data-Driven Decisions: Iterative design improvements based on user feedback led to a 50% reduction in reported usability issues, resulting in a cohesive and user-friendly platform.

There's more

There's a lot more, in case you are interested in taking a look at in-depth case studies from my previous projects.