K12 Reporting Portal
With the transition from paper to digital, we transformed a legacy system into a modern data platform for over one million educators serving millions of students annually.
The Shift to Digital Exposed Critical UX Gaps
The 2023–24 digital SAT rollout changed how educators interact with data. Some of the issues of the legacy portal were:
Redundant, unclear reports: Educators struggled to know which report to use for which task.
Limited data slicing: There was no easy way to filter by demographics, grade level, or test format.
Rigid exports: Downloading the data you actually needed was frustrating and inflexible.
Mixed-format confusion: Navigating between paper and digital test results created new layers of complexity.
Below are some wireframes from the original portal. At the time, all reports lived inside a single dropdown menu—making it hard for users to find what they needed.
The redesign prioritized clarity, data-centered workflows, and delivering the highest possible value within our technical and timeline constraints.
With the urgency of digital SAT rollout, we had to move fast. As the product design lead, I partnered closely with engineering, content, product, accessibility, and visual design to prioritize changes that could meaningfully improve the experience within time and technical constraints.
🔄 Key Design Strategies
1. Decoupled Report Types for Clarity
We restructured the information architecture around data needs —separating aggregate and individual reports. This removed redundancy, made navigation more intuitive, and surfaced the right data at the right time.
2. Redesigned Core Reports & Visualizations
We overhauled the most-used reports—Performance by All Students, Demographics, and Student Roster—enhancing visual clarity, data visualizations, and additional functionality.
3. Leveraged Accessible Design System
I worked with a visual designer to insure we were in compliance with College Board's design system Apricot. Leveraging existing components helped us scale quickly. The components that are created are vetted by our in-house accessibility expert to insure WCAG compliance. We worked together with development to insure that our designs were accessible for screen readers, and worked with color contrast and keyboard navigation.
Design Specs
With these strategies, I created user flows for the portal across 3 different user types - school, district, and state users.
MVP Screen Flows (Overview)
After launch, I created designed additional reports for BigFuture and the National Recognition Program.
After launch, we measured impact through analytics, educator interviews, and a Academic Year 2023-2024 survey (n ≈ 1,100) and Academic Year 2024-2025 (n ≈ 1,300).
✅ Clear Wins
⚠️ What Still Caused Friction
Navigation & Wayfinding
Navigation improved on paper (76% good/excellent in 2024-2025), but feedback still described it as unintuitive and click-heavy. Report names were unclear, and users struggled to locate specific reports or return to prior searches. 2024-2025 survey users reported more workflow friction. Multi-click flows, confusing paths, and a lack of shortcuts slowed tasks. Key actions like printing or exporting were still buried.
Instructional Use & Trends
Educators continued to find reports too broad for instructional planning. The loss of item-level detail, like the Question Analysis Report, was a major gap. Skills Insight and Knowledge & Skills reports lacked actionable insights. The portal didn’t support year-over-year analysis or class-level insights. Teachers lacked visibility into specific skills and trends. Many created external visuals to track performance over time.
Exporting and Score Reports
Users still couldn’t bulk download or easily filter reports by year, test date, or school. ESRs were hard to navigate and customize. Manual data stitching remained common.
Demographic Reporting
Demographic options were limited and didn’t align with school systems. Educators wanted filters for SES, SPED, ELL, and customizable uploads. The current structure made subgroup analysis difficult.
2023-2024 Survey
2024-2025 Survey
Post-MVP launch, we engaged over 50 school and district leaders throughout the year to understand how they were using the K-12 Reporting Portal in practice.
I synthesized this qualitative feedback into themes and pain points, then facilitated collaborative analysis workshops with product, content, engineering, and visual design to align on key insights. These sessions helped us prioritize usability issues and identify opportunities for improvement across navigation, data interpretation, and terminology.
Jan 2024 Collaborative Analysis
✅ Clear Wins
Graph Clarity
Educators consistently praised the Mean Score graphs in both the “Performance by All Students” and “Performance by Demographics” reports.
Export Functionality
Users appreciated being able to export data to Excel or integrate it with internal systems like Tableau.
Email Notifications
Report availability emails were highly valued, especially by district users responsible for maintaining records or distributing reports.
Familiarity with ‘Performance by All Students’
Most users gravitated toward this report as their main entry point into student-level data. It’s familiar, reliable, and flexible.
⚠️ What Still Caused Friction
Navigation and Discoverability
Educators struggled to find key features like the Student Roster unless they already knew to click through specific reports. The homepage didn’t guide them clearly.
Help Content Gaps
The FAQ and Help sections were hard to locate and lacked practical guidance. Users wanted clearer step-by-step instructions or contextual support.
Confusing Terminology & Structure
Report names like “Individual Reports” or tabs labeled “Performance by All Demographics” caused confusion. Users weren’t sure what to expect and often misclicked.
Overwhelming Excel Exports
Some users found the raw data exports dense and difficult to work with. They wanted pre-filtering or the ability to customize columns before downloading.
💬 What Educators Told Us
“If you haven't played around with it, the learning curve is a little steep.”
“Once you know where to go, it’s fine—but there’s no roadmap.”
“Clean layout, but too many clicks to get to the actual student data.”
🚧 The Takeaway
User interviews mirrored issues that were surfaced in the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 surveys, especially less frequent users. Observing users in how they achieve their tasks provided insight into context as well
Journey Maps
After the MVP launch, we used research insights and user feedback to prioritize high-impact improvements that could be delivered quickly.
Our goal was to focus on changes that made the biggest difference for educators without overextending what the system could support.
🔧 Targeted UX Wins (Post-MVP Improvements)
One-Click Access to Core Data
We redesigned the homepage so educators could immediately run their most recent reports with a single click—reflecting the feedback from our user interviews and surveys. From there, users could refine filters as needed, helping them get to actionable data faster and with less effort.
Unified Single-Page Structure
To improve discoverability, we introduced a centralized, scrollable dashboard that surfaced multiple key reports in one place.
Custom Data Export (Reintroduced & Refined)
Originally included in the MVP, custom export had to be temporarily removed due to engineering resources. In this redesign, we brought it back, allowing users to select key fields and cohorts while ensuring system stability.
Elevating High-Value Actions
We made common tasks—like generating rosters, downloading PDFs, and viewing the most recent test administration—more prominent across the portal. These updates were based on observed behavior and aimed to reduce clicks and friction for frequent users.
Contextual Help & Guidance
To support less frequent users, we introduced inline help in section titles as well as the report themselves. These additions helped reduce confusion and reliance on external training.
Homepage Redesign
Homepage Redesign (By Section)
These improvements didn’t solve everything—but they meaningfully improved how quickly and clearly educators could complete their most common reporting tasks, especially around recent test administrations and student-level data access.
We ran an unmoderated usability test with a sample size of 45 school and district users to see if the new design addressed the issues from the existing design.
✅ Clear Wins
⚠️ What Still Caused Friction
Mixed Perceptions from the minority.
While most users saw the redesign as an improvement, about 12% found it slightly harder to use, and 20% said it felt “about the same.” These responses were generally tied to layout density or needing to re-learn where things are.
“Still requires you to know what to look for, but seems more intuitive.”
“It’s not harder, just takes getting used to.”
Some Users Felt Overwhelmed by Content
While the dashboard consolidated tools, a few users—particularly those newer to the system—found the density of information slightly overwhelming. A handful recommended simplifying or reorganizing the layout.
“There is a lot of information on the screen… maybe it could be grouped differently or spaced out a bit.”
“Would be easier to have one location just for reports.”
A Few Labels Caused Uncertainty
Though most labels were clear, some users hesitated when interpreting titles like “All Students’ Scores” or “Average Scores at Your School.” This didn’t block task success, but a few felt unsure if they were choosing the right option.
“I guessed that ‘All Students’ would give me a list.”
“Not sure if it’s a report I need to run or a download.”
Minor Visibility Issues for Custom Exports
The “Create a Custom Data Export” link was functional, but its lower placement meant a few users missed it on first scan. Suggestions included making it more prominent or grouping it under a broader reports section.
“Didn’t see the custom export link until I scrolled back up.”
“Would expect that option to be closer to the top.”
🧠 Representative Quotes
“The new layout has all the choices on the homepage whereas in the old layout many choices were buried somewhere.”
“Search for a student is very clear.”
“Didn’t see the custom export link until I scrolled back up.”
“I guessed that ‘All Students’ would give me a list.”
“Still requires you to know what to look for, but seems more intuitive.”
📌 Takeaway Summary
We succeeded in surfacing key tasks like search, score access, and exports through a more unified and intuitive dashboard. Most users found the experience easier than before, with 67% rating it as an improvement. Still, opportunities remain to reduce visual clutter, clarify select report names, and fine-tune layout structure—especially for infrequent users or those unfamiliar with College Board terminology.