Case Study · Education
Al-Rushd Independent School
Clarifying distance learning for Al-Rushd
UI/UX and portal work on the UK distance-learning LMS so students and parents can reach courses without friction.
Tools
- Figma
- Laravel
- Vue.js
- PHP
Time duration
10 weeks
Overview
Al-Rushd’s distance-learning model lives or dies on the portal. Students and parents needed a clear path to login, courses and progress without coaching from staff.
Problem Statement
Remote learners and parents often share devices, forget which URL to use, and abandon portals that look like admin tools. Dead ends after login, unclear course lists and parent views that hide progress create support tickets and missed lessons, especially for families new to online schooling.
Solutions
- Simplify student and parent login into a single coherent entry.
- Clarify course navigation so the next lesson is obvious.
- Surface parent visibility without exposing staff-only controls.
- Reduce dead ends with clearer empty states and recovery paths.
Design process
Empathize
- Parent interviews
- Student walkthroughs
- Support ticket themes
- Staff shadowing
Define
- Persona pairs
- Journey maps
- IA rewrite
- Problem statements
Ideate
- Login variants
- Course list layouts
- Parent dashboards
- Empty states
Design
- High-fidelity portal
- Responsive fixes
- Vue component polish
- Content hierarchy
Test
- Usability with families
- Accessibility pass
- Pilot cohort
- Support playbook
−38%
Support tickets
−52%
Time to first lesson
10 weeks
Delivery
Discovery insights
Survey responses gathered during discovery that ranked jobs, friction and priorities before we committed to flows.
Who usually opens the learning portal in your household?
Student alone
37%Parent helping student
41%Parent checking progress only
16%Shared / unclear
6%
What frustrates you most after logging in?
Finding the right course
44%Unclear next task
29%Password / account issues
18%Slow pages
9%
Audience research
How people split across channels, screens and decision criteria. Used to weight information architecture and first-release scope.
How often do you need help from school staff to use the portal?
- Weekly or more22%
- A few times a month34%
- Rarely31%
- Never13%
Preferred device for lessons?
- Laptop46%
- Tablet28%
- Phone19%
- Desktop7%
Outcome
What the client said, and how the engagement landed after launch.
Parents stopped calling us just to find the next lesson. That alone changed our week.
Al-Rushd Independent School is a UK Islamic school delivering British-curriculum education remotely. The LMS at school.alrushd.co.uk is how that distance-learning model reaches students and parents every day.
We rebuilt the student and parent experience around clarity: a single coherent entry, course lists that surface the next lesson, and parent visibility that does not leak staff-only tools.
After launch, support volume around “where do I click?” dropped sharply, and families reached their first lesson in roughly half the time on average.