Flatiron School project · Chicago Public Library
Designed a mobile app to help Chicago Public Schools teachers find and share library resources relevant to their classrooms.
Problem statement
With school librarians disappearing, CPS teachers had become their students’ librarians, but the library’s events and resources were hard to discover and share.
A teacher-first mobile app for discovering and sharing CPL events and resources
Four design principles that kept the team aligned on every decision
Personal “Sparks” boards for collecting and sharing resources
Research
Interviews with CPL branch managers and community members, including many elementary educators, surfaced a widening gap between what libraries offer and what the community knows about.
Sources: Save School Librarians (1 in 4); Chicago Public Schools (3 of 4, 80%+); Pew Research Center (91%).
“I want my students to feel the same love of libraries that I felt when I was their age.”
Igniting curiosity
With CPS school libraries closing, teachers have become their students’ librarians, and Chicago’s move to proficiency-based learning means they need varied resources for personalized learning paths. Margot’s journey showed where finding those resources broke down. Four principles guided every feature.
Design decisions
What I did. Designed filtered search in Explore, with results by date or prioritized by the teacher’s location.
Why it mattered. Teachers are short on time. Relevant, nearby events and materials had to surface immediately.
What I did. Kept sign-up short and introduced key features without front-loading everything.
Why it mattered. Quick adoption mattered more than explaining every feature up front.
What I did. Designed boards where teachers collect resources with a single “Spark!” action and share them with students and colleagues.
Why it mattered. It encourages active engagement and sharing, fostering a sense of discovery for students and colleagues.
Reflection
Spark taught me how much the definition of the user can change once you get into the research. We started with a broad community challenge, but teachers emerged as the people doing much of the work of finding and sharing resources with students. If I revisited the project, I’d bring students into the research earlier as well so we could better understand both sides of that learning experience.