Redesigning a compliant and user-friendly web app for San Bernardino Schools

Main challenges

The San Bernardino County School System needed a significant overhaul of its internal web application, which serves as the central platform for recording and auditing school resources, facility conditions, and repair requests. This tool is critical for meeting state-mandated reporting requirements, especially those outlined in the Williams Settlement, which demands transparency and accountability in ensuring all schools have safe campuses, qualified teachers, and adequate learning materials.

However, the existing application became unreliable after years of incremental fixes and temporary patches. Instead of addressing the underlying architectural issues, previous updates had only applied superficial solutions, leaving the system difficult to maintain and, most importantly, non-compliant with Williams Settlement standards. Key issues included poor data integrity, inconsistent workflows, and a lack of user-centric design, all of which made it difficult for staff to log, track, and resolve issues effectively.

The district’s internal teams were also burdened with navigating a confusing interface and slow performance, which hindered their ability to report issues in real-time and generate the compliance documentation required by the state. What San Bernardino County truly needed was not just a redesigned platform, but a reliable, modernized system built around accessibility, usability, and compliance from the ground up.

The core objectives

Design was the largest component of this project, as it steered the direction and structural approach to development. This included everything from the buttons, color coding, and mobile design for the Teams application. The core goal was to give the user more confidence in the actions they were taking on every page during every touchpoint.

It wouldn’t be a Hounder web project without taking into account accessibility for the design and development of this application. The original San Bernardino School System application had text sizes, fonts, and colors that weren’t up to industry-standard WCAG guidelines. This needed to be improved to make the application easy to navigate for all users.

Last but certainly not least, the approach we took for this application relied heavily on improving the auditing and review processes that district administrators conducted for their schools. At the end of the day, that’s what this application was for, so we needed to ensure that it was quick and easy for them to evaluate whether or not a school has passed or if they require more resources.

Our process

First, like all our projects, we conducted a discovery session, which involved accounting for all pages of the application that needed improvements. Our team got acclimated to what the user's core needs were, which drove a large part of our design approach.

As we mentioned, we make sure (especially for government projects) to infuse accessibility into everything we do. For San Bernardino County School Systems, this involved going up in text pixel size and strategically utilizing bullet points, bold text, and indentations to improve readability. In addition, we made sure to keep the core of the website neutral and only use stark colors where it made sense. For example, green is for completed areas, red for errors, and blue for tasks that were “in progress”.

Most of the pages were accounted for during our discovery phase, but along the way, our team was able to identify more pages that were buried in layers of the website, ensuring that no page was left behind during this overhaul of the web application.

"This was the most interactive and table-rich application I've ever touched."

- Bryan Stifle, Chief Creative Officer at Hounder

To improve the user experience, text labeling was a large part of the redesign process in order to take the guesswork out of what the user needs to do next. This went as detailed as to whether a button is there for the user to “Upload” a new document or “Re-Upload” a document in case they needed to have the option to switch out an asset.

To support users at every stage of the process, we designed the application to clearly track and display their progress, regardless of whether they completed it in one session or returned later. A persistent progress bar was implemented across all pages, providing a clear, detailed view of what steps had been completed and what remained. This allowed users to easily identify any missing information and understand exactly what was required before moving forward to the next stage.

Mobile optimization was another key focus of this project. Since many users perform facility inspections and audits on-site, often while moving through school campuses, the application needed to support seamless, on-the-go data entry. We prioritized a mobile-friendly design that allows users to efficiently record findings in real time, directly from their phones or tablets.

The outcome

The results of this web application redesign resulted in an easy-to-use platform that features a self-explanatory navigation experience. Our color logic offers a quick reference for the user’s progress and explanation as to what’s needed in order to move forward through the asset recording process.

“Working with Hounder helped us transform a legacy system into a modern, user-friendly platform that not only meets Williams Settlement compliance requirements, but also makes it easier for our staff to track and report school resources and facility needs. Their team was thoughtful, responsive, and focused on building a solution that really works for our users.”

- San Bernardino School Systems

Given the data-heavy nature of the platform, our design and development teams focused on standardizing both high-level overviews and detailed data views to create a consistent user experience. By aligning with accessibility standards, we achieved the right balance between regulatory compliance and an interface that remains clean, intuitive, and easy to scan.