Mission Graduates App
Overview
Mission Graduates educates and connects parents with resources that support student success in the San Francisco Unified School District, preparing them for graduation and college.
Role: UX/UI Designer
Tools: Adobe XD, Adobe Illustrator, Invision, Paper and Pencil
Discovery
What’s the problem?
How can we bridge the communication gap between parents and Mission Graduates?
Target Audience
Research and Results
Parents in the Spanish-speaking community with school-aged kids.
English Language learners.
New to the US education system.
Working class.
In order to help our users, we need to learn a bit more about them. Surveys were distributed, user interviews were conducted, and we participated in Mission Graduates workshop as an ethnographic study.
Through this research it was discovered that:
Most parents access the internet through their mobile devices.
Users valued privacy.
Schedules and time constraints were due to work and student activities.
A lot of the parents knew little to no English.
Ideation & Creation
After gathering insights from the data, we jumped into the ideation process. We mapped user journeys, built personas, and sketched out early ideas to see what might work best. Through this process, we landed on the idea of a communication app centered around scheduling and planning. To make it easy for parents to pick up, we designed it to feel familiar and intuitive—something that fits naturally into their daily routines.
User Journey Map
Information Architecture
Sketches & Wireframes
Hi-Fi Mockups
We used card sorting to prioritize features and define our MVPs, then translated those into an information architecture that mapped out the structure of the app. We moved to sketches and wireframes, gradually refining our ideas until they evolved into high-fidelity mockups, ready for testing and development.
Reflections
Visions for the Future
A private messaging system. A direct messaging system will allow parents to communicate with Mission Graduates individuals and personnel.
Downloading documents. Important documents will be posted and available for downloading by the users.
A Wider outreach. So far, Mission Graduates works primarily with Spanish and English speakers. San Francisco has a rich diversity of many different cultures. It would be beneficial to open up the services to more audiences.
Nonprofit organizations offer great resources and support for the community, but sometimes this means you work with limited resources. Our team was built of volunteers, and while we were able to meet regularly, it took a bit of extra effort finding times and places to meet, as we all had different schedules.