Transforming Educator Certification for South Dakota
Overview
- Who Department of Education, South Dakota, USA
- What A multi-use service portal that verifies teacher certifications, bus drivers, and personnel licensing; as well as support administration and agencies for verification and reporting to governing bodies
- Role Mockups
Challenges
Working on a project in which the designer had left partway through
The original designer on this project had moved onto another role, and so I had quickly get ramped up on the project and understand what had already been designed and what hadn’t.
The style guide for South Dakota Department of Education, established before I started at Servos
Working with pre-established branding
This project is part of an larger system of projects for South Dakota, so I had to familiarize myself what had already been designed and approved by the Governor’s office, and what I needed to integrate from the Department of Education’s branding.
Trying to simplify complex systems
This portal needed to be used by teachers, staff, admin/agencies, and even parents to verify that educators and personnel have their required certifications and licenses. Their previous system was clunky, broken, and hard-to-use. I spent a lot of time in that system trying to understand the system before even trying to figure out a more simple UI for it
Process
Getting up to speed
I worked with my design manager and other team SMEs to understand what was needed from a functionality, UI, and branding perspective. We needed it to appear seamless that only one designer had worked on the portal design
Drafts for South Dakota 311 Educator Portal
Mockups for South Dakota 311 Educator Portal
Mockups & iteration
On this project, I spent a lot of time going back and forth with my design manager on tweaks and updates for the overall mockups, but also for the photography and iconography used on the portal. These tweaks were enough to get our clients across the finish line to move into development.
