IEP Pilot

User Personas

I identified key roles:

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Frustrations & Pain Points

I interviewed 6 providers employed within my company. The common sentiments are:

• Goals are generally poorly written. Case managers have too many students to track, so to compensate, quality is lost.
• Our providers currently use Google Forms, SEIS, our predictive analytics platform (iTAAP), and Excel sheets to track students' progress. It gets very overwhelming.
• Special education portals have poor user experience, which leaves providers unenthusiastic to use them.
• There is a lack of meaningful relationships due to providers having to manage a large caseload.

Desires

• An easy way to write specific, measurable goals that are ready to plug into IEPs, based on existing documentation on the student.
• Progress tracking and IEP management in one system.
• Fewer tabs, less jumping between tools.

IEP Requirements

I was in charge of researching specific needs our providers have when writing IEPs. Translating this workflow that is often very manual into an automated process aided by research-backed AI was difficult, as the flow would have to get translated into a JSON tree.

My initial wireframes explored:

• Card-based layout for goal + benchmarks.
• Sectional breakdown of PLOP: Strengths, Needs, Impact of Disability Statement.
• Editable field for session notes linked to performance sliders.
• "How close is the student to this goal?" meter, an idea that made it to production.

These hand-drawn pages also show early concepts for:

• Side navigation with sections like "IEP Generator" and "Your Account."
• Draft vs. Active IEPs, Student view vs. IEP view.
• Sketches of the chat UX, such as the questions we will cover.

Concept Sketches

First, I ideated from scratch what would best represent our goals for this platform. Then, I went on Adobe Fresco to design the characters.

Logo

IEP Pilot is officially written as "IEP Pilot," but the logo is stylized as "IEPpilot," with "pilot" in lowercase due to visual confusions with capital P's next to each other. By having "IEP Pilot" separate, we are easier to search on search engines.

The circle by itself serves as the favicon.

Colors

I wanted to go for a familiar, K-12 style color palette that is welcoming, so that writing IEPs feels less like a chore and more fun. When in use, the accessibility contrast was tested with WCAG AA compliance. The background, #FFF7E9 (beige) is to reduce screen fatigue.

Fonts

Sora Semibold is modern and readable for headings. Work Sans is a low-friction body font that’s highly legible when there is an abundance of text.

Characters

These characters represent IEP Pilot and the IEP writing team. Each character has a name and personality, like everyone that contributes to an IEP.

Marketing Landing Page

The landing page clearly explains the platform’s value: helping educators write high-quality IEP goals faster with research-backed AI. It highlights key benefits like time savings, improved compliance, and ease of use.

Features are shown in simple cards, supported by testimonials, a clear pricing model ($2 per goal), and a side-by-side comparison chart. Friendly illustrations and clean design make the page feel warm and trustworthy.

The final call to action encourages educators to get started and focus more time on student success.

AI Goal Generator

• Users select an Area of Need (e.g., Math, Behavior).
• AI returns a SMART goal with optional benchmarks.
• Re-generation and editable fields allow for context-specific tuning.
• PLOPs are AI-assisted and editable in 3 parts: Strengths, Needs, Impact.

Example:
“By the end of the school year, Olivia will improve her writing skills by scoring 4 out of 5 on the rubric for writing organization.”

Goal Tracking UI

• Each goal includes a benchmark ladder and a 0–100% progress bar.

Session Notes System

• Sessions auto-populate based on the user’s weekly schedule.
• Performance slider (0–# or % scale) captures daily student success.
• Quick notes, uploads, and activity summaries ensure easy documentation.
• Notes are organized by goal.
• “To-do” shows current day’s sessions.
• Past sessions are archived, editable, and performance-logged.

Wallet-Based Pricing

• $2 per goal generation.
• Preset amounts ($4, $8, $16, $32) streamline payments.
• Multiple payment types supported (Card, Affirm, Klarna, Cash App).
• Visual balance tracker encourages transparency.

IEP & Student Management

• Full IEP views with filtering by school, status (draft/active), and last edited.
• Bulk student upload via CSV or drag-and-drop UI.
• School names and grade levels are visible at a glance.
• Goal versioning ensures clarity in multi-draft scenarios.

IEP Pilot is built with a vector database. When users upload attachments, such as assessments or previous IEPs, we parse the information and send it to our AI model. From there, we match the student's educational background and health history with anonymous student profiles in the vector database to find suitable goals, and rewrite them to suit the student's current baseline.

Tech Stack

• Framework: React + TypeScript
• Styling: TailwindCSS
• Build Tool: Vite
• Icons: Phosphor Icons
• Payments: Stripe.js

Tools & Workflow

• Code Editor: Visual Studio Code
• Version Control: GitHub + GitHub Desktop

Deployment

CI/CD is handled through Azure Static Web Apps.

Data

I was in charge of converting Common Core Standards into a JSON file that can be integrated with our application.