With a background in journalism and marketing, Heather is well versed in all things content and inbound marketing. She’s passionate about delivering content that helps her reader take action almost instantly.
At Digistorm, we understand the importance of school systems integrating seamlessly with our products. Well-designed integrations make your job easier as they ensure all of the tools that you use regularly 'talk' to each other. It also means that when you update information in one of your systems, that information can be easily transferred to all of your other systems. Whether it's your school calendar, social media, website or software, integration is the best way to break down your system silos and streamline your processes.
Our expert design and development teams work on integrations for the Digistorm App every day. Within the app, we can offer flawless customised modules that create a continuous and user-friendly experience as you navigate throughout the app. Each integration will be designed differently to ensure the best possible experience.
At Digistorm, we design integrated school Apps with a combination of your school's brand guidelines and the integrated software's branding. This works to create familiarity and easy recognition for users of your app, while also ensuring the app is an extension of your school brand.
To highlight how we do this, we talked to one of our designers, Ava, about the unique design requirements of two integrated school apps: Haileybury and St Stainslaus' College.
Haileybury is one of the top private schools in Australia, with four campuses across Melbourne and an international campus in Beijing, China. In 2018, Haileybury was awarded the Australian School of the Year at the Australian Education Awards.
In 2018, we commenced work on Digistorm's biggest app project to date, building the myHaileybury app. Haileybury operates using multiple school software systems daily, for tasks such as advertising the canteen menu or giving students and parents access to their student portal. When starting the collaboration with Digistorm, one of their requirements was that they needed to access these programs through their app.
Haileybury has more defined brand guidelines than many of the other schools we work with. This makes our work as designers both easier and harder, as we have very little freedom with the design and must make sure we fully understand the entire scope of the client’s requirements and their ideas for the final product. As the client has lots of requirements, the design process might take a little longer, but will result in a brilliant product.
Their main school colours include tones of magenta and grey. They favour outlined, modern, minimalistic icons. These guidelines have been incorporated into Haileybury's app to match their branding. This ensures its design is in unison with its website and marketing materials.
Haileybury has been very generous with positive feedback both during the app design process and after the app went live. Kevin Peterson, Web and Mobile Developer at Haileybury, gave their Digistorm app 5/5 on all aspects and 10/10 on “Likelihood to Recommend” on Capterra in February 2020. His review includes statements such as “Great Software. Great Company. Great People.” Hayley from Haileybury gave the app another stellar review, saying, “Finally a product that understands K-12!”
Founded in 1867, St Stanislaus College has the proud honour of not only being the only Vincentian school in Australia but the oldest Catholic Boy's Boarding School in Australia.
In conjunction with the College, Digistorm started working on an app that was fully integrated with Edumate — a K-12 school management system used by hundreds of schools across Australia. Integration within the app meant that all of the systems managed by Edumate (including administration and student management) could be accessed from the palm of parents' hands.
We designed the app using customised design and content. By logging into the app with their college login details, the user can access the most important Edumate features. The content published within the app is also managed through Edumate's content management system (CMS).
St Stainslaus' College has some very traditional and elegant elements, and we wanted to reflect this in the app. Thin, outlined icons were used together with a very simple and clean design. As we mentioned above, the St Stainslaus' College app is fully integrated with Edumate. To sign in to the app, an Edumate login screen was designed using relevant school colours to match the feel of the app dashboard.
If you're looking to build a school communications app that integrates with your existing systems, talk to Digistorm! Our apps integrate with all leading school information and learning management systems, including Schoolbox, TASS and Edumate.