Redesigning Rubrics - Case study

Project brief

Rubrics are part of our platform's Learning Tasks module grading components, but they offered only basic functionality. Victorian secondary public schools rely heavily on rubrics; existing features fell short of their needs, and we wanted to move past an outdated definition of what a rubric could do in the product.

Schools want more detailed feedback for students rather than only grades—they need rubrics to show which skills students have and have not achieved. Many schools were leaving our platform's Assessments for other providers. When our design team was asked to uplift the Rubrics grading component, we got to work on a strategic redesign.

Parts of a rubric and terminology (existing)

• Criteria (row) — The dimension against which the student is graded.
• Grading scale (column) — The level or performance for each criterion.
• Content descriptors (cells) — The skills to be achieved at a given grading scale for a criterion.
• Rubric type — The grade or score model for the rubric (for example numeric or score range).
• Victorian curriculum strand — Standards and levels from the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority.
• Partial grading — Ability to select individual content descriptors on the grading screen.
• Guttman chart — Visual representation of student performance on individual skills or criteria.
• Exemplars — Examples of how student work should be marked against each criterion.

What’s the problem?

The Rubrics grading component on our platform fell short of current market demands because of limited functionality and an outdated interface—making it less competitive and less appealing to schools.

Impacts

On customers (schools), schools were pushed toward third-party platforms for grading, increasing cost and fragmenting day-to-day workflows.

On business, limited capability in Rubrics created retention risk and potential revenue decline when schools looked elsewhere for assessment needs.

Our goals and objectives

The goal was to redesign the Rubrics grading component to improve usability and intuitiveness, deliver a better experience for schools, and drive higher satisfaction and Net Promoter Scores after release.

High-level objectives were to:

• Minimise the time required to set up the Rubrics grading component.
• Enable seamless editing of rubrics and clearer monitoring of grading outcomes.
• Integrate Victorian curriculum scoring directly into rubrics.
• Facilitate granular, actionable feedback for parents and students.
• Improve overall usability and intuitiveness.

The competitive landscape

With limited research time and strong input from stakeholders, we ran a focused competitor review and used the findings to shape early concepts and scope. Together with requirements from the product owner and stakeholders, that work grounded the first proof-of-concept designs.

Our current product

Our product still let staff use rubrics for basic assessment and grading. Many gaps overlapped with competitor weaknesses—which meant addressing them was essential to stay competitive. Several improvements aligned directly with project scope and helped resolve user pain while strengthening our platform in the market.

Schools were asking for more: customisable layouts, performance charts, granular feedback, and Victorian curriculum strands in rubrics.

Some of our drawbacks included:

• Limited flexibility, restricting layout customisation.
• Lack of data visualisation.
• Student names not visible while grading, which complicated the flow.
• Cumbersome content-descriptor entry.
• A clunky flow that required double handling and increased admin burden.

Create and edit screen

Grading screen

Proof of concepts

Thanks to our design system, we used design prototypes instead of wireframes for proof of concepts—which worked well for customer demos. Scope came from the product owner’s requirements and the brief competitor analysis. We built working prototypes for the create and edit screen and the grading screen, used in customer demos and feedback sessions and reviewed with the product owner and key stakeholders to align on goals and priorities.

Create and edit screen (proposed features)

In addition to lifting the UI, proposed capabilities included:

• Six rubric grading types: numeric, alphabetical, decimal, score range, qualitative, and Victorian curriculum.
• Blank cells so staff can leave cells empty where skills align across levels and scores stay correct.
• Flip rubrics axis so schools using printed rubrics can match criterion on the Y-axis and scale on the X-axis.
• Colours for criteria to support grouping.
• Attach exemplars to criteria for display on the grading screen.

Grading screen (proposed features)

• Guttman chart for class-level performance.
• Partial grading at descriptor level for granular feedback and charting.
• Show student name; move to next and previous students.
• Download exemplars attached to criteria.

Customer demo and feedback sessions

We interviewed six schools using the proof-of-concept designs. The goal was to learn whether the proposed features would make our platform's Rubrics stand out against rubric modules in other MIS and SIS products.

Sessions validated earlier scoping decisions, surfaced improvements, and helped ensure proposed solutions met school needs.

Endorsement and scope

After the concept phase we tightened scope around validated, high-value capabilities and trimmed or reduced lower-impact items—turning ambitious concepts into delivery-ready work packages.

One of our most influential schools reached out after a demo to commend progress and offer time and support as we prepared to launch. That school advocates for roughly 180 other schools seeking guidance on developmental rubrics—making the endorsement a major win for the project.

Dev-ready designs and documentation

With two designers on the workstream, we completed design two weeks ahead of schedule. Work was scoped in chunks, mainly the create and edit screen and the grading screen.

Create and edit grid grew from one assumed task into four substantial pieces. We used understanding of legacy behaviour—including existing quirks—to inform a clearer, more intentional experience.

Create and edit screen

Grading screen

Compared with create and edit, grading was more straightforward—we reused much from the proof of concepts.

Major design challenges included legacy behaviour that users had adapted to, highly variable validation across rubric types, and error patterns that had to say what was wrong, where, and how to fix it—without overwhelming busy staff. We also tuned grid density for common laptop viewports (for example 1200 × 720 at typical browser zoom).

Final thoughts

This was the largest project I had undertaken on our platform. It came with real challenges, but it sharpened my craft, deepened relationships across teams, and levelled up stakeholder management.

A key takeaway is the value of thorough scoping and planning for unhappy paths early: proactively surfacing potential bugs and designing clear alerts and errors so users can recover with confidence—something I carry into later work.

The outcome is a stronger Rubrics direction aligned to school needs, better differentiated from competitors, and handed off with clearer product and design confidence.