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Design Framework for a consistent user experience across apps for teachers
Teachers are benefiting from the growing suite of MOE digital apps designed to streamline administrative tasks, helping them relieve their workload and reclaim time for student development. However, inconsistencies in app design cause frustration and inefficiencies.
Despite individual product teams conducting user research and testing, teachers often encounter:
This inconsistency leads to cognitive overload, which often goes unnoticed. Teachers may not consciously realise its impact, yet it subtle shapes their experience, influencing their outlook and decisions about using these tools. More critically, school leaders who wish to drive adoption of these digital tools often conduct additional professional development sessions to train teachers—adding another hurdle to change management despite the value these tools bring.
During the hackathon, our team's first task was to understand teachers' experience using MOE apps. We scoped our study to a real-life workflow where teachers would naturally use three key MOE administrative apps:
All Ears: A versatile survey tool for gathering student data. FlexiList: A mobile app that helps teachers create student lists, take attendance, and track information. Parents Gateway: A platform for schools to communicate with parents and collect consent forms.
To gain deeper insights into the teacher experience, we conducted:
👩🏫 4 in-depth user interviews with teachers from different schools and roles, identifying pain points and key factors that make digital tools user-friendly in a school setting.
🖥️ 14 usability testing sessions simulating a realistic workflow where teachers:
These tools are meant to streamline administrative work, but our research showed that inconsistencies in UX were creating unnecessary friction instead.
Teachers rated the apps highly for intuitiveness, ease of use and satisfaction, yet recorded sessions revealed frequent confusion and frustration. This disconnect suggests cognitive load is insidious – teachers adapt but struggle with inconsistent UI patterns, leading to hesitation and inefficiency.
Despite completing tasks, teachers required more effort than expected, verbalising confusion when features behaved differently across apps.
“What do I do? I add one more [staff]? Oh! Then I add another [staff]. How come it doesn’t add? Oh, I must click on [add]. Okay.” – User of FlexiList, adding collaborators
“In SLS, we have the same function. But the interface and wording for selecting the start date and end date is different. So when we see ‘Publish’ and ‘Unpublish’ in All Ears, we get confused.” – User of All Ears, opening forms for responses
Rather than recognising design flaws, teachers internalised the difficulty as their own failing.
“Sometimes click wrongly (into meetings instead of forms), but feels like it’s a problem on my end.” – User of Parents Gateway, when creating consent forms
As part of our research, we explored a key question: Is designing for teachers different from designing for the general public? Our findings revealed five key design considerations specific to teachers.
1️⃣ Teachers don’t see learning an admin tool as productive. They only invest time in learning if it directly impacts their teaching. 2️⃣ Data sensitivity is important. They care about security but expect it to be handled seamlessly in the background. 3️⃣ Short desk time. Most admin work happens in between lessons or on the go—apps must be quick and effortless. 4️⃣ Usage is school-driven. Teachers don’t choose their apps; they use what their schools mandate. 5️⃣ Preference for legacy tools. Despite better digital options, many still rely on Excel and Word due to familiarity.
With these insights, the team drafted design principles to guide UI/UX decisions for MOE apps. These guidelines will be tested, refined, and documented to ensure consistency across apps, providing a clear reference for team members and external collaborators.
1️⃣ Immediate Value Recognition – Teachers should instantly see the benefits of using an app, reducing cognitive load. 2️⃣ Minimise Learning Effort – Apps should be intuitive, requiring little to no onboarding. 3️⃣ Leverage Familiarity – Design should align with MOE workflows, using language and structures teachers already understand. 4️⃣ Transparent Data Security – Assurance of security should be built into the design to instill confidence in teachers.
A core feature of many MOE apps is seamless access to student data, allowing teachers to filter, select, and track students efficiently. However, our testing revealed:
Parents Gateway
All Ears
FlexiList
There was significant variation in task completion times. New users struggled the most, but even experienced users got confused due to having to recall the different ways of selecting students across the three apps.
“Select students... Are they from 2025? Oh, wait. Six teaching groups or form classes? Oh, but I don’t see that. Does that mean I’m in the wrong place?” – New user, FlexiList
“Not intuitive because if I add [a class], I don’t have a confirmation that I have added. So that confused me a bit.” – Experienced user, FlexiList
The team set out to redesign the ‘Select Students’ feature, in which we:
We then put our redesigned feature to the test, by conducting another round of Usability Testing with teachers. Initial UT results indicate a reduction in task completion time, and more importantly, fewer misclicks and confusion.
Of course, redesigning and standardising the ‘Select Students’ feature is just a first step.
To tackle the larger problem of inconsistent UX across MOE apps, we propose a set of best practices and design patterns that balance standardisation with creative flexibility. By establishing a library of pre-approved UI components and interaction flows, product teams can:
Ultimately, this approach will provide teachers with a more seamless and intuitive experience, allowing them to focus on their core responsibilities.
When we presented our broader vision at the Feedback Bazaar, testers responded positively:
“With this, I can reduce 30-40% of the product team time spent on discussing design developments”
“I am looking forward to this in the future, where MOE apps will all look the same”
“Great potential for the design system prototype! Looking forward to seeing the next iteration!!”
From left: Jordyn Khoo (GDP/ITD), Faith Ang (CEP), Elky Li (GDP/ITD), Jarrett Yeap (GDP/ITD), Leonard Siar (MOE/ITD)