Foster Source
Online LMS system for guiding foster parents through childcare
🗓️ Timeline
7 Months
✒️ Role
UI/UX Designer
🧠 Skills
Design System
Prototyping
Product Thinking
🤝 Team
1 Product Manager
1 Engineer Manager
8 Developers
1 UI/UX Designer
📜 Overview
Foster Source recognized a significant challenge in providing consistent and effective training to foster parents. Existing methods often relied on difficult-to-navigate workshops, disparate resources, and an outdated, overpriced, and difficult-to-navigate online portal. This led to:
Lack of Accessibility: Limited options for parents who didn't know how to fully utilize technology
Inconsistent Learning Experience: Information was scattered, leading to fragmented knowledge.
Administrative Burden: Foster Source staff spent considerable time manually tracking progress and assembling material.
Our goal was to redesign an intuitive and empowering LMS that would streamline the learning process, increase training completion, speed up administrative duties, and better prepare foster parents for the complexities of their role.
📦 Outcomes
$10,000
reduction in costs annually from previous LMS system
4,000+
parents nationally utilizing this product
50%
increase in user engagement following our redesign
🔬 Research and Interview
15 User Interviews: Focused on current training experiences, pain points, preferred learning styles, and technical proficiency.
50 Surveys Responses: Gathered quantitative data on accessibility needs, preferred content formats, and challenges with existing resources.
Competitive Analysis: Evaluated existing LMS platforms (both general and niche) for best practices and areas of opportunity.
Meetings with Stakeholders: Learned about administrative pain points on backend management of events, courses, parents, and general data.
🔍 Discovery and Pain Points
Navigation Confusion: Users reported getting lost in the existing system due to inconsistencies, poorly labeled links, and an unintuitive course structure.
Progress Visibility: Parents expressed frustration at not knowing their progress within courses or how much was left, leading to demotivation.
Sign-in & Profile Management: Users reported frequent issues with registration and onboarding, creating unnecessary friction.
Administration: Executives had a difficult time creating new events and managing users due to an un-tailored platform.
✏️ Designing for Parents and Administrators
A cornerstone of the Foster Source LMS redesign was a dual-focused design strategy, addressing the distinct yet interconnected needs of two primary user groups: foster parents and administrative staff. By understanding and catering to both user journeys, I ensured the platform not only provided an empowering learning experience for parents but also dramatically improved operational efficiency for the organization.
➡️ Workflow
Discovery & Prioritization: I regularly synced with the Product Manager and Stakeholders to understand upcoming features and project priorities.
Collaborative Design & Iteration: I created wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes, actively seeking technical feasibility input from developers during the drafting phase.
Weekly Hand-off & Development Support: Designs for each weekly sprint were prepared and finalized. I utilized tools like Figma to provide developers with clear specifications, including redlines, asset exports, and interactive prototypes.
Review & Refinement: At the end of each sprint, I reviewed implemented features during sprint reviews, confirming design fidelity and gathering feedback that informed subsequent iterations.
