loopED: A parent x teacher app
A central communication app between schools and parents.
This case study explores a concept app focused on improving communication and information sharing between teachers and parents. The idea originated after observing several social media posts where parents were communicating directly with teachers via personal text messages.
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While I am not a parent, this pattern raised concerns around boundaries, privacy, and the lack of a structured communication channel. In response, I explored the concept of a dedicated app that could serve as an official, centralized space for updates and communication between teachers and parents, reducing reliance on personal messaging while maintaining clear, respectful, and professional interactions.
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From the outset, the goal was to design a minimal chat experience that felt familiar to existing communication tools such as text messaging or social platforms, while intentionally removing features that could blur professional boundaries.
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By leveraging familiar interaction patterns and simplifying the feature set, the chat experience aimed to remain approachable and easy to use, while maintaining a clear, professional tone suitable for communication between parents and teachers.
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While email is traditionally viewed as a more professional communication channel, it often implies delayed responses. In this context, that delay can be a drawback, particularly when parents or teachers need timely updates or quick clarification.
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This reinforced the decision to explore a chat-based solution that could provide immediacy, while still maintaining appropriate professional boundaries.
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Beyond messaging, I explored additional features that could support proactive and transparent communication. One key concept was incident and activity reports, allowing teachers to share timely feedback with parents when notable events occur, whether positive or negative. This enables parents to respond quickly when appropriate, rather than learning about issues after the fact.
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Additional supporting features included an events calendar to keep parents informed about upcoming school activities, news articles related to school updates, and access to guidelines and policies so parents could easily reference school rules and expectations. Together, these features aimed to create a single, reliable source of information for parents, reducing miscommunications across multiple communication channels.
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This approach also helps bridge an existing communication gap. Traditionally, important information is often relayed from teachers to parents through students, which can lead to messages being forgotten, misunderstood, or never delivered.
By providing a direct and reliable communication channel, the app reduces dependency on students as messengers and ensures parents receive accurate and timely information from the school.
User Personas
The first step in the process was creating user personas for both parents and teachers. This helped establish a clear understanding of the needs, goals, and pain points on each side of the experience, ensuring that design decisions balanced the requirements of both user groups.
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Frances is an office worker with two children, of vastly different age ranges, in school. She maintains a busy schedule but values staying informed about her children’s behavior and progress so she can remain focused during her workday. Family is a core priority for her, and her children’s education is of utmost importance.
She wants accurate and timely information directly from the school, rather than relying on her children to relay messages, as this has proven unreliable in the past. She typically communicates with teachers via email but finds it challenging to stay up to date due to the high volume of work-related emails she receives daily. As a result, important updates can be missed or delayed.
She is busy, organized, and proactive, and values communication that is clear, concise, and easy to act on.
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Mark is a primary school teacher who lives alone and is deeply committed to the wellbeing and development of his students. He is the homeroom teacher for a class of 30 children and also teaches English to four additional classes, each with 30 students. This results in a demanding workload that includes lesson planning, grading, and regular communication with parents.
He needs a way to share important information with parents in a clear and efficient manner, particularly for class-wide announcements. Reaching out to parents individually is time-consuming and difficult to scale alongside his teaching responsibilities. While he cares deeply about his students, Mark also values maintaining professional boundaries and prefers to share minimal personal information.
He is busy, fairly organized, and active, and benefits from tools that streamline communication without adding to his administrative burden.
Splash Screen
Empty Sign In Screen
Filled in Sign In Screen
Sign In Flow
The first area of focus was the login experience. I intentionally did not design a public sign-up flow, as an app handling sensitive student and family information requires a higher level of security and privacy.
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Instead, the concept assumes that accounts are provided by individual schools. Parents would receive a generated login from the school, already linked to the school’s system and preloaded with their child’s information. This approach prevents unauthorized access, reduces setup friction for parents, and ensures data accuracy from the outset.
Unauthorized email login
If a user attempts to access the app with an unrecognized email address, a clear error message is displayed indicating that the email is not registered. The message directs the parent to contact the school to resolve the issue, reinforcing that account access is managed by the school rather than through self-service registration.
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Landing Page
Upon logging in, parents are taken to the homepage. The homepage immediately surfaces the parent’s name along with a brief status indicator that shows whether their children are currently within school hours. This provides quick awareness at a glance.
A notification icon is positioned alongside this information, serving as the primary entry point for updates and communications delivered through the app.
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Below this, a Latest Updates section surfaces recent incidents or updates reported by teachers that relate to the parent’s children. This section is designed to prioritize timely and relevant information without requiring parents to navigate deeper into the app.
For parents with multiple children, each child is assigned a distinct color. This color is used consistently throughout the app to visually associate updates and information with the correct child. In the Latest Updates section, this system enables parents to quickly scan and understand which child each update applies to, improving clarity and reducing cognitive load.
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The Upcoming Events section follows, giving parents a quick weekly overview of school-related events. This allows parents to stay informed at a glance without needing to navigate to a separate calendar view.
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Below this sits the News section, which features written articles published by teachers or the school. These articles highlight school activities, achievements, and important announcements, helping parents stay connected to the broader school community.
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Finally, a Policies and Guidelines section provides a centralized library of information related to school rules and student welfare. This section is intentionally positioned near the bottom of the homepage, as this information is typically referenced less frequently and does not require immediate visibility.
Landing page of loopED
Chat Function
From the bottom navigation, parents can access the chat section. This view presents a list of teachers the parent has communicated with, each labeled with a color-coded indicator and the child’s initial. This allows parents to quickly understand which child each conversation relates to at a glance. If for some reason, the teacher in contact is not associated with a specific child, no indicator is shown.
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The chat experience supports real-time messaging between parents and teachers. However, to maintain clear professional boundaries, several common messaging features were intentionally excluded. There is no calling functionality, no delivered or read receipts, and no visible online status. These constraints help prevent expectations of immediate response while still enabling timely and appropriate communication.
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Within each chat, parents can see the teacher’s profile information, including their photo, name, role in relation to the child, and the child indicator. A report action is also available, allowing parents to flag inappropriate behavior if necessary.
To maintain fairness and accountability, misuse of the reporting feature may result in consequences. This ensures the system supports safety and trust while discouraging false or malicious reports.
Chat List
Chat Example
Entered Text Example
Sent Message Example
Send-to-All Function
Teachers also have the ability to send mass communication messages to all parents within a specific class or group. These messages are clearly labeled with a callout headline stating “Sent to all parents,” ensuring transparency and helping parents distinguish class-wide announcements from individual conversations.
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This approach saves teachers time by allowing them to communicate with multiple parents simultaneously, rather than sending messages individually. At the same time, each parent receives the message within their own private chat, preserving clarity and keeping conversations separate.
Sent to all Message Example
Activity / Incident Reports
The Activity section is accessible via the bottom navigation and is designed to surface critical updates related to incidents or achievements involving a parent’s children.
Within this view, parents see a chronological, day-by-day timeline of reports submitted by teachers. Each entry is color-coded by child, allowing parents with multiple children to quickly identify who each update applies to.
Incidents vary in severity. For example, a report indicating that a child was absent from a lesson may signal a potential safety concern and require immediate parent action.
To ensure timely awareness, critical incident reports can also trigger push notifications, reducing the risk of delayed responses.
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Selecting an individual report opens a detailed view that includes the date and time, event type, associated lesson or period, the reporting teacher, and any additional notes provided. Each report also includes a clear call to action, allowing parents to contact the relevant teacher directly if follow-up or resolution is required.
Activity Timeline
Notification Example
Alert Detail for a critical issue
Alert Detail for a less critical issue
Event Section
Within the Events section, parents can see a high-level view of upcoming school-wide events for the current week. This overview is designed to provide quick awareness without overwhelming the user.
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Selecting “View Calendar” takes parents to a full calendar view, where events are displayed in greater detail. The expanded view includes a weekly summary, with visual indicators beneath each date to signal when one or more events are scheduled.
View Calender Button
Event Page
Selecting a date in the calendar’s top bar filters the event list to show only events scheduled for that day. This interaction allows parents to quickly focus on relevant information without scrolling through unrelated events.
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Parents can then select an individual event to view a detailed event page, which includes a full description provided by the relevant teacher. For events that require parent involvement or coordination, a “Start Chat” call to action is available, enabling parents to quickly contact the appropriate member of staff and take action when needed.
Selecting an event
Event Deatil Page
News Section
The News section presents a list of articles published by the school and teachers, highlighting achievements and school-wide updates relevant to parents. This section helps keep parents informed and engaged with the broader school community.
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Selecting an article takes parents to a dedicated news page where they can read the full content. Each article clearly displays the author, identified as the staff member who wrote it, providing transparency and accountability around shared information.
View News Flow
News Page
Policies & Guidelines Section
The Policies and Guidelines section serves as a centralized library of important information related to school rules and student welfare. This allows parents to easily reference official policies when needed.
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Selecting a policy directs parents to a dedicated detail page where the full content is displayed. Each policy includes a “Last updated” indicator, providing transparency and helping parents understand the currency of the information.
View Policy Flow
Policy Page