Streamlining school counselling processes — one dashboard at a time

TL;DR

What I did and why it mattered

I inherited a stalled counselling platform with hundreds of screens and several incomplete flows, mapped the gaps across multiple user roles, designed critical missing flows from scratch, and stayed through two months of dev handoff until it shipped.

The Problem

Counsellors managing sensitive caseloads with spreadsheets and scattered files

School counsellors juggle sensitive, high-stakes caseloads every day — tracking sessions, coordinating with parents and teachers, managing consent and documentation — often with nothing more than spreadsheets and scattered files. There’s no unified view of a student’s journey, no structured way to flag who needs follow-up, and critical paperwork lives in inboxes and shared drives instead of one reliable place. CounselSync was being built to change that.

Where I Came In

Hundreds of screens, stalled mid-design, and a dev team waiting to build

CounselSync had been in progress for a while — and then the previous designer left. Flows were incomplete, edge cases were unresolved, the designs sat on a slightly outdated version of the design system, and development couldn’t move forward. I was brought in to make sense of what existed, identify what was missing, and get this across the finish line — auditing hundreds of screens, closing gaps, updating the design system, and driving toward dev handoff.

Making Sense of It All

Auditing the existing designs, mapping data flows, and finding the gaps

CounselSync serves multiple roles — counsellors, students, parents, teachers — each interacting with the same data differently. With several incomplete flows and no designer to ask, I needed to see the full picture fast.

I created flow diagrams mapping how data moves between roles — exposing incomplete flows, missing edge cases, and outdated design system inconsistencies along the way. I then annotated every flow with logic, gaps, and decisions — sharpening my own understanding while building ready-made documentation for the dev handoff.

Tracking Case Requests Across Roles

Giving non-counsellor roles visibility into the cases they raise

Any non-counsellor role can raise a case request, but only the counsellor manager decides whether it becomes an actual case. I designed a mini dashboard with a table view of all submitted requests and their status — so requesters are never left wondering whether their concern was heard.

Getting It Out the Door

From Figma to production — and staying until it shipped right

Handoff wasn’t a one-time event. I annotated every flow with logic and decisions, added all flows to Monday.com to give the dev team a structured build sequence, and walked them through the designs live.

But designs don’t survive first contact with code. I stayed on for two months post-handoff, conducting UI audits to catch where the design was getting lost in translation — and working directly with devs to course-correct before things shipped. The goal was simple: what we designed is what the counsellors get.