Digital School Register
Modernizing Italy's education infrastructure while achieving 95% adoption among 3000+ teachers.
My role
Co-Lead Designer
Duration
Apr 2021 - Jul 2021
Platform
iOS, Android, Web
Collaborators
Senior Designer, Ministry Representatives, 20 School Directors, 3000+ Teachers
Overview
The Digital School Register transforms a legacy government system into a modern, accessible platform serving 3000+ teachers across 50 schools. As co-lead designer, I balanced strict regulatory requirements with intuitive user experience to achieve unprecedented adoption rates.
My Role
I co-led design with a senior colleague, interfacing directly with ministry representatives, school directors, and teachers. Our team managed stakeholder alignment across government, educational, and technical domains.
Problem Statement
Teachers aged 35-65 struggle with the mandatory digital grade reporting system. The existing platform generates 200+ daily support tickets with 40% error rates in data entry, causing compliance issues and teacher frustration.
RESEARCH
Discovery Phase
To understand the intersection of regulatory requirements and user needs, I conducted 30 shadowing sessions during grade entry, analyzed 6 months of support tickets, and facilitated 5 co-design workshops.
The key insights were:
Upon revisiting the user interviews and survey insights, I expanded my analysis to assess pain points across the entire prescription refill journey.
Compliance anxiety: Fear of regulatory violations paralyzes decision-making
Time pressure: Grade entry happens in 5-minute breaks between classes
Device fragmentation: Personal phones to decade-old school computers
Support burden: Younger teachers become unofficial IT support
Significance
Accurate grade reporting is legally mandated with strict deadlines. System failures don't just frustrate users; they risk regulatory penalties and impact student academic records.
ITERATION 1
How might we ensure 100% compliance while reducing cognitive load?
Working with ministry
Weekly validation sessions with legal teams ensured every interaction pattern met regulatory standards. I created a compliance checklist integrated into the design process.
Working with stakeholders
I mapped competing priorities between ministry (compliance focus), teachers (simplicity needs), and directors (efficiency requirements), using collaborative workshops to find common ground.
Design Decisions
Guided compliance workflows Designed step-by-step processes with built-in compliance checks, making regulatory violations technically impossible.
Using progressive forms that validate each step before allowing progression.
Smart error prevention Implemented contextual validation that explains why certain inputs are invalid, teaching compliance through usage.
Creating educational error messages that build user understanding over time.
Implementation
Pilot tested with 100 teachers across 5 schools, measuring compliance rates and task completion times.
Did it work?
Partially. Achieved 100% compliance but only 60% task completion rate.
What was wrong?
Teachers reported the system felt "like filling tax forms" - technically correct but emotionally exhausting. The compliance-first approach created unnecessary friction for simple tasks.
ITERATION 2
How might we make compliance feel effortless rather than enforced?
Co-design workshops
I facilitated 6 sessions mixing teachers, directors, and ministry reps, using card sorting and journey mapping to redesign information architecture collaboratively.
Working with engineers
The development team (external contractors) had limited flexibility. I created detailed specifications and interactive prototypes to minimize interpretation gaps.
Design Decisions
Smart defaults system Analyzed usage patterns to pre-populate fields, reducing 12-step process to 4 essential decisions.
Learning from user behavior to suggest likely inputs while maintaining edit capability.
Batch operations Introduced ability to grade multiple students simultaneously for common scenarios.
Balancing efficiency with audit trail requirements through clever UI grouping.
Offline-first architecture Designed offline mode with automatic sync, addressing unreliable school internet.
Creating trust through visible sync status and conflict resolution flows.
Final Solution
The reimagined Digital School Register makes compliance invisible through intelligent defaults, batch processing, and offline capability.
Outcomes
95%
adoption rate 1st semester
60%
reduction in support tickets
4.2/5
user satisfaction score
Final Takeaways
Compliance through design, not documentation: Instead of teaching rules, we made wrong actions impossible. This shifted compliance from a burden to an invisible safety net.
Co-design with opposing stakeholders works: The workshops revealed that ministry and teachers shared more goals than expected. Finding common ground early prevented months of revisions.
Government projects teach patience and persistence: Working within institutional constraints pushed me to find creative solutions within rigid boundaries.
Made with ♥ in Italy. Copyright © Ugo Possenti 2025
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