My School app

Context

University life is increasingly fragmented. Students often rely on separate apps for timetables, assessments, calendars, notes, weather, transport, and wellbeing, forcing them to constantly switch between different tools just to stay organised.

Conversations with 20 university students revealed that more than three quarters regularly used at least two planning apps. While each product solved an individual problem well, none supported the complete student journey. Managing academic life often meant managing multiple disconnected experiences.

This presented an opportunity to rethink what a student planner could become—not another feature-focused productivity app, but a unified academic companion designed around how students actually study.

My Role

I led every stage of My School, from identifying the opportunity and designing the user experience to development, App Store release, and continuous iteration. As an independent project, every design and product decision was my responsibility.

Design Challenge

Rather than designing another timetable or task manager, the goal was to reduce the mental effort required to organise university life.

The challenge became:

How might I design a single product that understands the context of a student's day and surfaces the right information before they have to search for it?

Instead of organising the experience around individual features, the product would be organised around students' everyday academic workflows.

Research

The project began with understanding how students currently organise their studies.

Research included:

• Interviews with 20 university students
• Competitive analysis of existing academic planning apps
• Workflow mapping of common study behaviours
• Identifying recurring pain points across different disciplines

Several clear themes emerged.

Students rarely thought about their work as isolated tasks. Instead, they constantly switched between schedules, assignments, transport, weather, learning resources, and wellbeing throughout the day.

Most planning apps focused on only one part of this workflow, leaving students responsible for connecting everything themselves.

These insights shaped every design decision that followed.

Design Principles

Four principles guided the product throughout its development.

1. One Academic Journey

   Academic planning extends beyond timetables and assignments. Scheduling, learning, coursework, performance, and wellbeing are all connected parts of the same experience and should feel that way inside the product.

2. Context Before Features

   Students rarely open an app to browse features—they open it because they need an answer.

   The interface was designed to surface relevant information at the right moment, reducing unnecessary navigation and helping students focus on studying instead of managing software.

3. Designed Around Students

   Every student studies differently.

   The product supports different learning styles, assessment structures, academic calendars, and personal workflows without forcing everyone into the same planning system.

4. Native by Design

   Rather than treating every Apple device identically, each platform embraces its own strengths while maintaining a familiar experience across the ecosystem.

Designing Around Student Workflows

The product was designed around everyday questions students ask throughout the day.

Instead of expecting users to navigate through individual features, the experience proactively delivers information based on context.

Understanding Context

Students don't wake up wondering where their timetable lives.

They wonder:

• What class is next?
• Do I need to leave now?
• What assignments are due?
• Do I need an umbrella?
• How much time do I have before my next lecture?

Designing around these questions led to the creation of Smart Brief, a contextual overview that combines schedules, deadlines, travel time, weather, wellbeing reminders, and personalised insights into a single experience.

One Connected Experience

Rather than separating subjects, schedules, assignments, exams, and wellbeing into isolated modules, My School treats them as connected parts of the same academic journey.

For example, an assignment belongs to a subject, contributes towards overall performance, appears in upcoming schedules, and can even be linked to wellbeing records. This interconnected model reduces duplicated information while providing richer context throughout the app.

Information Before Interaction

Instead of presenting every feature equally, the Home experience prioritises what matters most right now.

Upcoming classes, approaching deadlines, transport information, weather conditions, and personalised insights are surfaced automatically, allowing students to make decisions without navigating through multiple screens.

The result is an interface that feels quieter despite supporting significantly more functionality.

Reducing Navigation

As the product evolved, navigation became increasingly important.

The interface adopts familiar Apple navigation patterns across every platform. Compact devices use a tab bar for quick access to primary destinations, while iPad and Mac transition to a sidebar that supports larger and more complex workflows.

A dedicated Search experience also allows students to access virtually every feature without remembering where it lives.

Rather than adding more menus, the design reduces the number of decisions required to reach information.

Navigation adapts to each platform while maintaining a consistent interaction model throughout the Apple ecosystem. Three core interaction patterns work together to reduce navigation effort: contextual actions through the top bar, quick access via the tab bar, and a dedicated Search hub for discovering every feature.

Information Architecture

As new functionality was introduced over multiple releases, maintaining clarity became just as important as adding features.

Features were grouped around student goals instead of technical categories, allowing related tools to appear together naturally. This organisation helps users discover functionality progressively without overwhelming first-time users.

The result is an information architecture that continues to scale while remaining approachable.

Native by Design

My School was designed as a native Apple experience rather than a cross-platform compromise.

Each device shares the same design language while adapting interactions to its own strengths.

Examples include:

Rather than duplicating the interface everywhere, every platform extends the product in ways that feel natural within its own environment.

Product Evolution

Since its initial release, My School has evolved through continuous iteration.

Every update introduced refinements informed by real-world usage rather than assumptions made during design.

1. Navigation became simpler.
2. Information hierarchy became clearer.
3. Performance tracking became more flexible.
4. Widgets became smarter.
5. Cross-platform consistency improved.

As the product matured, each release focused less on adding features and more on making existing workflows feel faster, simpler, and more intuitive.

The project continues to evolve today.

Reflection

Designing My School taught me that successful products are rarely defined by the number of features they include.

1. The greatest challenge was maintaining simplicity while supporting increasingly complex academic workflows. Every new capability introduced another opportunity to increase cognitive load, making prioritisation and information hierarchy just as important as functionality itself.

2. Working across Apple's ecosystem also reinforced the importance of designing systems rather than individual screens. Decisions made on one platform often influenced interactions across five others, requiring consistency without sacrificing platform-specific experiences.

3. Perhaps the most valuable lesson came from shipping a real product. Designing for actual users, maintaining updates after release, responding to feedback, and continuously refining the experience transformed My School from a university project into an ongoing product that continues to grow.

Outcomes

• Independently designed, developed, and published on the App Store.
• Available across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro.
• Supports students through a unified academic planning experience instead of fragmented workflows.
• Continuously improved through real-world usage, App Store feedback, and ongoing feature releases.
• Evolved through multiple major versions while maintaining a consistent product vision.