Enboard K-12 | Simplified Single Sign-On
About My Role
My tenure at Enboard showed me the power of UX in transforming organizational thinking and the value of speed in delivering features, even as concepts.
Enboard provides single sign-on (SSO) solutions to K-12 institutions across the nation. With both native and web applications, Enboard's solution short circuits the immense authentication workload between students and their digital assets.
Account provisioning, resource provisioning, enhanced authentication, password self-service, and portal customization are necessary benefits also provided by this platform. With over four million users, Enboard is one of the premier K-12 SSO solutions in the nation.
I served as Enboard's sole, and first, UX designer working with a team of 6-8 developers to execute on a completely new product direction. Until 2018, Enboard was powered by a Sharepoint front-end. For a litany of reasons, Sharepoint independence became a requirement. I rapidly redesigned the SSO Portal and developed the front-end using Bootstrap in concert with the back-end developers.
Upon role-out of the Bootstrap front-end, we also introduced an integrated file manager which would have been impossible with Sharepoint. This re-platforming led to much quicker development times, higher user satisfaction, with added end-user customizations.
Job Title
UX Designer
Tools Used
Jira, Pen and Paper, Balsamiq, Sketch, Photoshop, InVision, JustInMind, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap
Big Win(s)
My file manager concept won the business of Denton ISD (32,000 students) and Parkland SD (10,000 students); yearly MRR of $39,000.
*Enboard was sold to Identity Automation before classroom impact metrics could be obtained.
SSO Portal iOS Application Design
With the introduction of React Native, our SSO Portal could be easily rendered, natively, on-device. This increased the platform's capabilities given direct access to technologies like biometrics, location services, and the camera.
While Single-Sign On was Enboard's main benefit to students, a large portion of the app was devoted to authentication. This included the login screen, password reset screen, multi-factor authentication screen, and several others. These screens were impacted by the technologies available when running natively on a mobile device.
The experience most impacted by a mobile transition was the login experience. A native device allowed users to scan QR codes to login, login with biometrics, fingerprints, and receive text message 2FA PINs. All of these authenticaion methodologies allowed a greater ease of sign in, especially for younger students.
SSO Portal File Manager Integration
The diverse range of storage solutions is one of the largest impediments between students and their digital assets. The Enboard file manager lightens this load, integrating popular cloud drives like Google Drive, Office 365, and Dropbox. It integrates seemlessly with on-premises network file systems.
A key differentiator between Enboard's file manager and competitor products, is the ability to provide network files off-premises because of Enboard's suite of authentication features.
A Concept Becomes Reality
The concept for the file manager won Enboard two accounts allowing us the financial overhead to develop the full feature. While the file manager pitch deck took me 14 hours to design and assemble, in one day, I considered the effort well worth the overtime. It was amazing to see a concept become reality, in light of my team's ability to move quickly and deliver meaningful customer value, at scale.
Other Contributions
I contributed to the marketing and strategy efforts of Enboard. The challenge of a legacy start-up requires clear messaging and consistent guidelines. To that end, I assisted in a website rebuild and assembled our first style-guide. External and internal, adoption of the style guide is positive and a meaningful indicator of future company direction.
