CTLS

A refresh for Cobb Teaching & Learning System, focusing on improving functionality and ease of use

Overview

CTLS (Cobb Teaching and Learning System) is an education platform used by students and teachers for managing classes, grades, and assignments.

While CTLS serves an important purpose, its interface often felt overwhelming, outdated, and inefficient — especially for students navigating multiple classes each day.

This redesign focuses on making CTLS student-centered, intuitive, and visually modern, using insights from user feedback

Process

1

Empathize

2

Define

3

Ideate

4

Prototype

5

Test

Empathize

I personally used CTLS for many semesters, and while this platform serves an important purpose, its interface often felt overwhelming and inefficient

User Research

To better understand user pain points and needs, I conducted a small-scale user research study that included:

8 interviews with current high school students and a teacher
A short online survey shared among peers (12 responses).
Usability observation sessions where participants completed common tasks in the current CTLS interface.

A Few Key Questions

  • How do you currently use CTLS?
  • What frustrates you most about the interface?
  • Which tasks are most important or frequent?
  • How engaging is CTLS to you?

Key Insights

Insights
  1. Too many steps to find assignments
  2. Resources are hard to find
  3. Hard to distinguish between classes
  4. Visually outdated
Notes for my design
  1. Simplify navigation and group related features together
  2. Organize various resources
  3. Keep teachers and classes visible persistently on the left
  4. Modernize the interface

Define

Problem

Students and teachers both rely on CTLS daily, yet the interface made common tasks harder than necessary.

Through firsthand experience and peer feedback, I identified major usability issues:

1Cluttered Layout
Too many icons and nested menus.
2Navigation Overload
Finding grades or assignments required multiple clicks.
3Lack of Clarity
Teacher names and class info were buried or inconsistent.
4Low Engagement
Outdated visuals made the system feel less inviting.

As a student user, I wanted to design a system that felt clear, motivating, and human-centered.

Ideate

Existing Design

Existing CTLS Design

Information Architecture

I decided to restructure CTLS around an efficient user flow

Classes and teachers live in a persistent left sidebar, always visible and easy to access
The main navigation elements moves to a horizontal top bar, separating global and contextual actions
Redundant menus will be removed, and icons will be standardized

Prototype

User Flows → Wireframes → High Fidelity Designs → Prototype

User Flow

CTLS User Flow Diagram

Wireframes

CTLS Wireframes
CTLS Wireframes
CTLS Wireframes

High Fidelity Designs

CTLS High Fidelity Design

Test

After building a high-fidelity prototype, I wanted to validate whether the redesigned navigation made CTLS easier to use and more intuitive for students.

I conducted usability sessions with current high school students using my interactive Figma prototype. Each participant completed key tasks such as finding assignments, checking grades, and switching between classes. I recorded their task completion times, observed navigation behaviors, and recorded their feedback

Performance Improvements

  1. 60% faster average navigation between pages
  2. Task completion improved from 80% before to 100% after