Designing and enhancing the experience of an institute’s owner/admin internal dashboard - UI/UX case study
Here I will talk about my learnings about designing a complex dashboard for an institute’s admin.
About me
I was the solo designer who joined Achimo back in 2021. As a newbie, it was a roller coaster for me. As the team was small, it was an excellent opportunity for me to collaborate with stakeholders and the engineering team to receive constant feedback. I had the chance to make mistakes in my early days, which helped me become a better version of myself.
Additionally, I worked on Achimo’s design system to enhance the UI and maintain consistency throughout the design.
About the company
Achimo is an ed-tech SaaS-based platform that empowers small and big institute owners/admins or individual instructors with a one-stop solution to run their online/offline coaching business, manage it digitally, and grow.
Understanding the users and their problems
Who are the users
Problems and challenges
1. Achimo had a basic dashboard for institute owners, but with limited data and features. As the institutes were growing, they need more features for better management.
2. Many institute owners play the roles of both administrators and instructors/teachers. They run their coaching businesses single-handedly and struggle to manage administration.
3. Individual teachers or institutes run multiple courses, and managing their batches, learners become tougher day by day, as well as time-consuming.
Some institutes operate their coaching businesses in offline centres and aim to expand through a hybrid mode (combining offline and online modes of teaching).
They offer various types of courses, including live courses, pre-recorded courses, and mixed courses (combining live and prerecorded elements). Coaching centres typically have multiple batches for the same course, such as Physics for the 12th class or JEE preparation.
Hence we were required to design three dashboards for three types of users:
- Admin/owner: A dashboard giving an overview of their earnings, course and batch statuses, user management, and administration management.
- Instructors: A dashboard giving an overview of instructors’/teachers’ daily schedules and tasks, and managing assigned batches. In the case of an individual instructor who serves both as an admin and an instructor, they can switch between the two dashboards.
- Learners: They can access their batch sessions and manage their courses.
In this case study I will explain about designing Admin dashboard.
The earning overview
Now, you will ask why accordion for this.
Imagine you logged into your account as an admin, and someone is watching your screen behind you. You feel awkward if someone is gazing at your earnings.
So next time whenever admin opens the dashboard, the earning section will be closed accordion, and he can expand it as per his convenience.
Admin wants to see either monthly growth or yearly growth in their earnings.
So I have provided an option to select either “This Month” or “Lifetime.” The graph will change accordingly. If the admin selects “This Month,” the graph will display monthly-wise net income increments and decrements. If they select “Lifetime,” the graph will change to show the net income increments and decrements on a yearly basis.
Courses and batches section
It took a lot of iteration to arrive at this point. I will explain the complexity behind it.
- A single Course has multiple batches. Sometimes institutes run more than one batch for the same course at the same time. For example, Academic courses for both school and college levels.
- Courses recorded one time (self-paced courses) and there are no batches. So learners can enrol anytime.
- Furthermore, they offer 3 types of batch sessions:
1. Live,
2. Pre-recorded (self-paced), &
3. Mixed (live + pre-recorded).
And, are 3 types of modes for conducting sessions
1. Online mode (virtual sessions)
2. Offline node (at coaching centres)
3. Hybrid mode (Online + offline)
So I came to decide on the basis of what important metrics an admin wants to see. The primary thing he wants to check is the active batches running out of how many courses and metrics showing the distribution of live, pre-recorded and mixed batches.
For full details, he can visit to manage page where he can see full details related to each course.
Users section
There are primarily two users-
1. Learners
2. Instructors/teachers
Daily Schedule section
A dedicated section for viewing and managing schedules for the whole institute.
Sessions are categorised into two category
1. Video sessions
2. Assessments sessions
Institutes also conduct regular tests/assessments for student performance. Admin can club the assessment with a batch and can sell increased batch fees higher than the usual batch.
Also, he can create an assessment from scratch, use presets, or reuse past assessments with scheduled dates and times.
That’s why I put the assessments card in the all sessions section.
Session card
Assessment card
Session card Variants
Learners attendance
After the Instructor conducted the session, the admin and Instructor can see attendance details.
Seeing the same pattern in Twitter and LinkedIn, I came to this decision why don’t I select the same layout for the admin dashboard
I choose to keep the right side section for other important notifications, reminders, feedback and reviews.
Activity section
Admin can see and mark as read for the recent activities like different kinds of requests from learners, messages and other kinds of help they are seeking for.
Notes and to-do section
Admin can write short notes and to-do tasks list here for reminders according to his convenience.
Feedback and Reviews section
Reviews and feedbacks are important for an Institute for maintaining & enhancing its quality and help in its growth.
Along with these screens, I also created internal screens for a details overview of the dashboard section, where the admin can analyze and take actions accordingly.
Learning, after this project
This was my first time working on a dashboard project working from scratch.
It was a lot of iteration to select the layout that best suits for the project. Next, what content should come on the basis of how frequently the user visits and take action, prioritize what to show and constant feedback helped me pull it off.
Design is about collaboration and constant feedback.
