Catholic Memorial didn't have a real app, it had a website squeezed into a phone. Students couldn't find things without digging. Parents had no clear way to check grades or communicate with teachers. Faculty had no centralized dashboard. Three different audiences were being served by one generic interface that didn't actually work well for any of them. The deeper issue wasn't just bad UI. It was that nobody had sat down and asked: what does a student actually need to see when they open this at 7:45 in the morning? What does a parent need at 9pm when they're checking on their kid's progress? Those are fundamentally different moments, and the design needed to reflect that.

I started by mapping out who uses a school app and when. Students need fast, glanceable information - today's schedule, upcoming assignments, quick links. Parents need visibility - grades, attendance, teacher communication. Faculty need tools - admin shortcuts, class rosters, announcement systems. From there I built an information architecture that branches by user type at login. Each role gets a tailored home screen with the content that matters most to them, but the underlying navigation system stays consistent so the app still feels like one product. I designed component-first in Figma - buttons, cards, list items, navigation patterns - and assembled screens from those parts. This kept the visual language tight across 40+ screens without things drifting.

The final concept delivers three distinct dashboard experiences inside one app. Students see their schedule and assignments front and center. Parents see grades, attendance, and a direct line to teachers. Faculty see class tools, admin shortcuts, and announcement controls. Every screen shares the same design language - consistent type, spacing, color, and interaction patterns - so it feels like one app, not three stitched together. Navigation is role-aware but structurally predictable: you always know where you are, and you can always get back. The detail screens (individual assignment views, teacher profiles, grade breakdowns) follow a shared template so the system scales without needing custom layouts for every edge case.

This project taught me that the hardest design problem isn't the interface - it's understanding what different people need from the same system. A student dashboard and a parent dashboard look different, but they need to feel like the same app. That tension between customization and consistency is where the real design thinking happens. It also pushed me to think in systems early - building from components instead of one-off screens meant I could move fast without losing coherence across 40 layouts.