Best UX/UI Design Tips for Futuristic School Management Systems
In this digital era, software developers are becoming more creative by the day. Institutions dedicated to education, continue to benefit from viable school management software in making their operations more straightforward.
Unlike decades ago, students are now using modern technology to learn and discover new things. On the same note, their parents, even the school’s administration takes advantage of these technological innovations.
For example, parents can get notifications on their phone apps concerning any school event or use helpful features such as in-app payment systems.
Online classes are convenient for teachers who can afford to carry out lessons with their students anywhere on the globe. The content center is also a management system for teachers to create customized content or lectures and send them straight to students.
It also allows quick and straightforward communication between students, teachers, and parents, using either the web or a mobile application.
The administration can store all students’ data and report cards in secure, easy-to-access data-driven reports and progress checks. In addition, they can use the school’s ERP software to organize all classes, lessons, online exams, and schedules.
Understanding the Basic Terminologies
User Interface (UI) design is the building block of interfaces. The focus here is on style or appearance. The best designers focus on creating interfaces that users find easy and enjoyable to use.
In short, the User interface (UI) is the specific asset related to user interaction. For example, UI may involve concepts like visual design elements. These may include colors and typography.
The user experience (UX) on the other hand, is the outcome of the user’s interaction with a product or service. This means that user experience includes, but is not limited to, the user interface. The UI is but a single factor contributing to making the end-user experience a wonderful experience.
UX design involves creating products that are valuable, easy to use, and interesting to interact with. It has to do with enhancing the customer’s journey. That’s why when app designers try to justify the time users spend on their apps. A great UX comes from apps that are functional but also likable.
Designers indeed tend to follow similar guidelines but they must seriously consider when they simplify based on context. For example, it makes sense that processes like e-learning app design are mate simple and easy for the learners.
Long before hitting the development stage, app designers should embrace the user-centered design as a core value – something that precedes the capabilities of available technology. What the users need and the context of that occurring demand should be part of designers’ primary pointers. Specific users’ needs dictate the approach. For example, software developers develop school apps by directly addressing issues that students experience. By overcoming limitations like reading small text, the app directly solves a recurring problem.
What are the Important Design Guidelines for School Management Systems?
To start, designers should follow design guidelines. These guidelines are essential for users to evaluate how to apply the important principles of spontaneity, learnability, consistency, and efficiency.
By following a path dedicated to an optimized process, they develop appropriate design formats and fulfill —even exceed —the institutions’ learning needs. For example, users can immediately identify when a webpage appears too busy. Hence, designers should be able to easily detect when this takes place and immediately counteract.
Some of the essential pillars of UI design:
- Style – including brand colors and logos
- Layout – including grid or list structure
- User interface (UI) components – including menus, buttons
- Text – including font, tone, labels/fields
Software designers should apply guidelines based on:
- The specific context
- The design platform
- The type of user interaction
- Design Principle: A general point of direction
- Design Guideline: How to approach the principles
- Design Rules: The direct instructions
What Are the 9 Best UX/UI Design Tips for Futuristic School Management Systems?
1. Ease of access to system operations
Users must have no trouble accessing their tools. Hence, software developers should make them as friendlier as possible. The present technological advancement—among other factors—drives users’ expectations higher than ever before.
Users now expect easy-to-use, responsive apps. To accommodate for that, designers seek to build systems that allow users to accomplish their tasks within fewer actions possible.
Hence, the apps should contain accessible systems that can enable teachers, students, and parents to utilize the online platforms quickly and efficiently. For example, they should get all the essential information on one page, at a glance.
2. There should be a link between the system and the real world
Designers should make an effort to apply the language and concepts that teachers, parents, and students identify in the real world. Like in any healthy communication, the app’s language should be clear and understandable.
The information should flow logically and in line with the school management system’s expectations. By interacting with the app, users should relate to a familiar set of contextual content.
3. Users should navigate the system freely
Designers should give users a digital space that allows them to easily go back and forth in different interfaces. This should also allow them to freely navigate different pages.
For example, teachers and parents can keep track of the school’s current timetable and extracurricular activities. They can also follow up on their children’s previous to present learning progress by simply clicking on a particular date on the interactive calendar.
4. Maintain consistent and standard graphic elements
Interface designers should maintain standard graphic elements and terminology across similar platforms to avoid user confusion.
For example, an icon representing a specific concept should not represent a different concept elsewhere. Consistency in the use of design elements brings relief to teachers, parents, and students. They can all learn to quickly identify design elements, their purpose, and their meaning.
5. Work towards error prevention
Software designers should design with a minimum amount of errors. A skillful crafter always tries to avoid making a mistake, but in design systems, any flaw can escalate to a huge problem later on. Any errors within the school management systems are easy to detect and finding them before the users is a battle always worth fighting.
The two possible ways designers can achieve error-free results include flagging or eliminating actions that could lead to errors.
6. The system should enable recognition rather than recall
Ensure cognitive load reduction by maintaining the task-relevant information within the display. This makes it easier as users explore the interface. Keep in mind that human attention is limited; people can only juggle up to five items in their short-term memory.
Due to the memory limitations akin to human beings, designers should ensure that users can employ recognition. For example, they should not have to recall information across different dialogue parts. This data should come naturally, in a familiar and convenient setting.
An example is a school app’s home page running a single tab. Important information should be but a mouse click away - news, school reports, assignments, extracurricular activities, and all other crucial school factors should occupy a prominent spot in the display.
7. Maintain simple design with visual appeal
The most significant benefit for graphic designers shifting to UX design is making the app more attractive. An appealing app improves the overall user experience. It creates a positive first impression and makes users relaxed as they navigate the app.
Designers should ensure that the educational software is visually appealing and helps the user segregate information. Every bit of information fights for the user’s limited attention, which could inhibit the user’s memory recovery of relevant information.
Therefore, the display must only contain the necessary components for the task at hand. It should also provide a visible and transparent means of navigating to different content.
8. Help users identify and recover from errors
The user interface designers should anticipate that some users cannot understand technical terms. Therefore, they should always express error messages in plain language to ensure that the user understands what’s wrong.
If a user can identify what’s wrong, it would be easier to find a solution. However, they don’t need to go through the hassle of reporting the error to the IT department and waiting a long time to get it fixed. Any mistake reported by a user is one undiscovered by the QA part. Although FAQs are instrumental in giving users the autonomy they sometimes need to solve their own trouble, it is much better to reduce their frustration and the chance they will turn to a manual for extra help.
9. Ease of access to the help and documentation pages
Documentation involves user guides and quick reference guides. So, if users somehow need help, they get it easily. Of course, software developers should make apps so that help is least necessary. When teachers, learners, and parents can navigate the systems faster and understand the language used, they will hardly opt for documentation.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) and written manuals are always necessary, for more reasons than users checking for intricate details. Any time someone reaches for the support page, the path they take searching and finding the answer should be short.
What You Should Know to Design the Best School Management Software
Users judge designs quickly
Please note that users take great concern about the system’s usability and likeability. This is what makes them judge the design either positively or negatively.
Users care most if the system allows them to achieve tasks with minimum effort.
Understand your users’ contexts and needs. In the school management system scenario, parents using the app to pay school fees should do so with minimum effort. Teachers assigning tasks to students should be able to accomplish the same without too much hassle.
Users need enjoyable and satisfying systems
When you make your users happy, they’ll keep coming back for more. So, whenever you can predict your users’ needs, you will create systems that they can enjoy with more personalized and immersive experiences.
For example, you can incorporate concepts like gamification to make your design more interactive. Gamification is a way of adding friendly mechanics into a website, learning management system, business intranet, or online community to increase people’s participation.
The goal here is to engage more with users to encourage collaboration and interaction. Users connect well with brands that relate to them at all levels. They enjoy flawless experiences that come with such brands.
Conclusion
As schools become more tech-oriented, the future for school apps seems even brighter.
We must use technology and develop school apps that significantly emphasize the individual benefit for each of the stakeholders: teachers, parents, and students. All of these should conveniently interact with each other and feel well-connected.
Some of the best school apps show a friendly environment where all the diverse participants converge driven by common interests and the app’s convenience factor. In a smart school platform, everyone’s internal tasks should be much easier to compete.
