Isano School Platform
Case StudyProject Overview
Isano School is a school management platform built for Rwandan schools: attendance, fee tracking, student records, timetables, events, and gradebook in one place, with parent communication that meets families where they are — WhatsApp and SMS.
What began as a response to how school staff actually work became my own product business. I designed the brand identity, the responsive web app used by school administrators, and the companion mobile app used by teachers every day.
The platform is fully trilingual — English, French, and Kinyarwanda — and runs as a progressive web app so schools with modest hardware and intermittent connectivity still get a fast, reliable experience.
My Contributions
Product Strategy: Defined the product around the daily workflows of Rwandan school staff, prioritizing attendance, fees, and parent communication.
Brand Identity: Created the name, the school bell mark, and a warm Rwandan-inspired palette led by Isano Ochre.
Web App Design: Designed the admin shell end to end: dashboard, students, attendance, fees, messaging, timetable, gradebook, events, and settings.
Mobile App Design: Designed the teacher-facing companion app for marking attendance and messaging parents from the classroom.
Design System: Built a token-based system with documented colour, typography, and component rules so every surface stays consistent.
Outcome: A live platform in beta at isano.school, with real schools onboarding and daily active use.
Design Notes
The design language is deliberately calm and operational: these are working tools, not marketing pages. Every screen helps staff understand state, make a decision, and move on with minimal reading.
The palette draws on Rwandan visual culture — an ochre pulled from Imigongo art tones carries calls to action and brand moments, while a disciplined set of status colours (green, terracotta, orange, blue) maps strictly to meaning, never to taste.
Typography pairs Poppins for headings with Open Sans for body and UI text; the wordmark alone is set in Raleway. Kinyarwanda locales get adjusted line-height for comfortable reading.
Parent messaging is WhatsApp-first with SMS fallback, and templates are localized, so a fee reminder or attendance alert lands in the language each family actually speaks.
Identity Board
Poppins
Primary: Headings
A geometric sans with friendly confidence, used for every heading across the marketing site, web app, and mobile app.
Open Sans
Secondary: Body & UI
A highly legible workhorse for dense operational screens, forms, and tables, with line-height tuned for Kinyarwanda text.
Isano Ochre
#CC8B2C
Unity Blue
#4A90E2
Charcoal
#1C1C1C
Imigongo White
#FAF7F2
Success Green
#6DB33F
Terracotta
#B85450
Warning Orange
#F57C00
Responsive by Design
