We're going into our third year of using the new K12 after having been on Legacy forever. On a near daily basis I am disappointed in the lack of care being put into the design and experience of the most basic destinations in the K12 product. While weekly updates continue to add “features” that are trivial (a new column in a report, a new way to sort a table), major usability flaws make implementation brutal, and every new hiring year it repeats itself. If I'm wrong on any of these, I would genuinely appreciate a correction. Some examples:
- The circular logic and complete disarray of the contact card/profile/student information pages is disturbing. Multiple paths to the same data leave users with similar but different views of critical and basic information (schedules, learning profiles, contact info)
- No rhyme or reason to when you're looking at a “profile” or a “contact card”
- In rosters and other “card” style views, the mouse responds as if a clickable area exists when it doesn't. Some icons are clickable (medical), others are not (Learning Profiles).
- Learning Profiles still appear in at least three different ways:
- on a roster card as a blue icon that cannot be clicked
- in a gradebook as a blue icon that CAN be clicked
- in an assignment as a letter L and something to the effect of “this student has a learning profile.” Seriously, Blackbaud? It's an icon… it would be a tiny fix to make this consistent
- When turning in assignments and attaching a document, two LARGE buttons appear for Upload and Google Drive. Each responds as if it's a button. When using the Google Drive option, students must click on the actual tiny Drive icon to “push” the button.
- filtering/dates/views still don't hold values when navigating the site
- there is still no way for a teacher to see what turned in, ungraded assignments exist across classes.
- There is still no notification (with a back link) option for when a student simply turns in work.
- when creating a “links” section in a page/bulletin board, the system arbitrarily cuts off lists with 3+ items requiring students to click a “view all” button, even when no space constraints exist.
- Assessments simply don't work and there appears to be no plan to fix them.
- Blackbaud ID with SSO creates a loop half the time that brings the user right back to enter their email address again.
- Preferred names are sometimes shown in quotes, sometimes in parentheses, and sometimes optional.
The weekly “look at the great stuff we did” emails are, frankly, insulting to those of us who spend our time trying to train users to work around poor design. I don't remember the last time I got an update that appeared to fix a genuine problem or really add new functionality - instead it's little cosmetic changes or “pat us on the back for including data in a table that should have been there in the first place.”
Until the BB dev team releases a public development roadmap, or bug tracker, or ticket system that can be searched, viewed, etc… we'll all end up in the same ridiculous loop asking support the same questions and getting the same “I'll need to look into this further and get back to you,” aka “In two weeks you'll get an email saying that what you wanted doesn't work.”
Browsing these forums, it's clear that even really popular ideas languish for long times before being addressed. Is anyone experiencing this differently than I am? Am I simply confused or missing the “real” features somewhere?
For two years I've been pushing back on teacher requests, explaining that a lot more goes into software development than is apparent from a quick glance, but starting this school year and seeing so little improvement to the system leaves me wondering why I'm defending it at all.
