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Our Approach

Design for Users and Decisions

School Views has the opportunity to be more than an information resource. It can become a trusted tool for helping CPS families make real-life decisions and helping K1C continuously learn and engage with those families. Here are three design principles we'll keep centered:

1

Keep the "Why" in view

Every product decision serves both a real parent need and a strategic K1C goal. Design decisions should be aligned with both K1C's objectives and parents' decision-making needs and motivations.

2

Beyond information to action

School information as a catalyst for parent engagement and action. K1C's family engagement strategies should inform how School Views connect families to actions and decisions, complementing and expanding the work that K1C is already doing offline.

3

Iteration and learning for the life of the product

Continuous learning is built into the platform (not just the design process). K1C should monitor and improve user engagement on an ongoing basis through site analytics that inform K1C's family engagement strategies.

Process & Roles

K1C has already started on a deeply thoughtful, learning-centered path of planning for School Views. We envision joining this path through a process in which Parliament leads UX Strategy & Product Development and K1C leads User Engagement.

Parliament leads UX Strategy & Product Development activities from Discovery through the product Launch, collaborating closely with K1C and the Parent Design Team. This process will be iterative and user-centered, organized around two-week sprints and ongoing opportunities for feedback, testing, and reviewing milestones during development.

Discover & Define
Design
Develop
Launch
Learn
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Led by Parliament
Strategy & Requirements
Wireframes & Prototypes
Platform and Analytics Build & Iterative Refinement
Beta & Public Release
User Analytics & Testing to Inform Product Refinements
USER ENGAGEMENT & LEARNING
Led by K1C
Engage Parent Design Team & Define Goals
Parent Testing & Concept Validation
Engagement Planning & Content Refinement
Comms Rollout & User Engagement Activities
Parent Feedback & Strategy Experimentation

K1C leads the strategy and activities around User Engagement with School Views, with Parliament joining and supporting Parent Design Team sessions and reviewing other relevant materials (e.g., Strategic Plan, School View launch communications and toolkits, and so forth) to ensure alignment across the broader strategy.

Process Outline: Product Development

UX Strategy & Product Development activities led by Parliament include the following:

  • Participate in Parent Design Team sessions – Gather direct feedback and observe real user behavior to ground design decisions in actual parent needs and considerations.
  • Initial product strategy & UX work – Define core users, key use cases, and experience goals to shape the overall direction of the product.
  • Early journey mapping & concept exploration – Map initial user flows to align stakeholders on structure, identify pain points, and guide early design decisions.
  • Define success criteria - Help K1C define what success means with respect to the School Views platform and identify the criteria that can be used to measure progress toward those goals.
  • Wireframes & interactive prototypes – Translate discovery insights into structured wireframes and clickable prototypes to bring core user flows and features to life.*
  • Design review & iteration sessions – Facilitate design review cycles with stakeholders to gather feedback and continuously refine usability, navigation, and layout.
  • Final design delivery – Synthesize feedback & refinements into polished, production-ready designs with finalized UI, interactions, and specifications for development.
  • Design measurement and analytics approach - Map the site flows and activities that will be tracked for ongoing learning, experimentation, and improvement. Where possible, link these analytics to K1C user engagement activities.

* Parliament understands that these designs must include a CMS that enables K1C to generate its own translations for bilingual or multilingual user experiences (i.e., not through an auto-translation functionality).

  • Development leadership & build execution – Lead the full build, translating finalized designs into a scalable, production-ready product aligned with UX/UI specifications.
  • Bi-weekly client check-ins & demos – Hold 2-week sprint reviews with stakeholders to demo progress, gather feedback, and proactively surface blockers early in the development process.
  • Build measurement and analytics approach - During platform build, integrate tracking of site flows and activities for ongoing learning, experimentation, and improvement and build tools for admin access to tracking data.
  • Launch & deployment – Manage final QA, release coordination, and production launch to ensure a smooth rollout and stable transition into live use.
  • Beta release & external QA testing – Roll out the platform to a small group of external users to conduct QA, validate functionality, and surface usability issues prior to public launch.
  • Public release & stabilization – Manage final production deployment, monitored system performance, and addressed post-launch issues to ensure a stable and successful public rollout.
  • Training for K1C staff - Train K1C staff in platform and analytics data access for ongoing learning, experimentation, and improvement.
Ongoing Learning & Refinement

Parliament's contracted involvement in this project will come to a close with the initial public release of School Views, training of K1C staff, and bug fixes as needed for three months.

However, we strongly recommend treating School Views as a long-term product rather than a one-time project. Iteration and improvement should continue beyond the public launch of this site - what will make or break the impact of School Views is the way in which K1C treats it as an asset that evolves over time as families begin using the platform, new lessons are learned, and the CPS ecosystem evolves.

Ongoing, post-launch activities for School Views may include: