7 Weeks of Progress

Built the structural foundation the entire app runs on. The same screens now adapt intelligently to the device: phone matches Carlee's Lovable designs exactly, desktop shifts to a multi-column sidebar layout. Every surface — Home, Search, Pathway, Groups, Calendar — responds automatically.

The first thing a new mom sees. Both screens built to match Carlee's Lovable designs on mobile, with deliberate desktop adaptations. Copy is warm throughout — "Sign in to your MatchED account," errors like "That password doesn't match what we have for you."

Two targeted clean-ups that make Home feel calmer. The Filter button was removed — the recommender handles curation on Home. The floating chat bubble was removed — it wasn't Carlee's intent and made the screen feel Facebook-like. Chat belongs in Groups.

A 60-second onboarding after sign-up that collects everything MatchED needs to personalize the app — without ever feeling like a form. Five steps, each a single decision. "Skip for now" on Children means no parent hits a wall.

The complete end-to-end flow for a curriculum publisher, tutor, or micro-school to join MatchED. From selecting Vendor role through the application form through Company Profile setup post-approval. The Company Profile step was the missing piece — designed and built from scratch.

Before building, a structured review with Andrew confirmed exactly what's in scope vs. placeholder. The result: a full dashboard with Sales, Bookings, Calendar, and Availability tabs — each with real mock data that shows what the experience looks and feels like when a vendor has activity.

MatchED's core value proposition lives here. Results are ranked by what a parent's trusted network already uses. The Everyone / Friends / Groups filter chips make that trust layer one tap away — calm and intuitive, not crowded like Amazon.

Two return-state screens after Stripe checkout — reassuring on success, helpful on failure. Completely undesigned before this task. These unblocked Daniel's Stripe wiring on the critical launch path.

Vendors with growing catalogs need one place to find, manage, and update their content. This is the vendor's own back-office catalog view — visually distinct from the member Library, with affordances to edit, archive, or preview any resource as a member would see it.

The form a vendor fills when publishing a new resource. The two highest-leverage fields — "Searchable By" and the "Purchase vs. Register" toggle — both received clear UI treatment so vendors never have to guess what they're choosing.

What a vendor sees the moment they open MatchED. Not a blank dashboard — a personalized at-a-glance view of how their business is performing. A vendor who immediately sees "500+ Families Trusted" and "$2.4k this month" knows MatchED is worth their attention.

The privacy control that makes MatchED's trust layer real. Without this, the Friends / Groups filter in Search has nothing to filter on. An inline three-option selector appears at the moment of saving — sensible default (Groups + Friends), shown on every resource card so parents always know their setting.

When a parent taps another member's name anywhere in the app, she sees enough to decide whether to trust or connect — not a social media page, a homeschool community snapshot. Privacy is respected strictly: only info the parent has opted to share is ever shown.

MatchED's network effect depends on parents having friends. Without a way to find people, new parents are stuck — they can't use the Friends filter in Search because they have no friends yet. Discover surfaces ranked suggestions based on signals the parent already trusts: shared groups, mutual friends, similar family.

The last piece in the booking loop. Vendors can now host sessions and classes — parents who book need somewhere to go to see what they signed up for, when, and how to prepare. My Bookings list plus a per-booking detail page that answers every question before the session starts.

When a member taps a vendor's name in Search, on a resource detail, or in a review, they now land on a clean profile that tells them who this vendor is and whether to trust them. Not a marketing page — a credibility surface that answers "is this the right vendor for my family?"

Vendors can now package multiple resources into a curated, sequenced playlist — think "Apologia 6th Grade Bundle." Members adopt it with one tap. Playlists appear in Search and Library with a Verified badge so members know it's vendor-curated, not random.

Before this, a vendor who published a resource with a typo had no way to fix it. Now every published listing has a full management lifecycle: edit it in-place, archive it when retired (without losing purchase history or reviews), and restore it later if it comes back.

A methodical audit of every shipping surface at 390px, 768px, 1024px, and 1440px — comparing each against Carlee's Lovable intent and patching wherever the export drifted. No redesigns, no new components — purely restoring what Carlee built on every device a parent might use.

The Profile menu linked to "Notification Settings" but the screen didn't exist — Brian designed it from scratch. Every parent can now choose exactly what reaches them: per notification type, by channel, and per group or friend. Notification fatigue is real; this makes MatchED a platform people trust in their pocket.

Every conversation in the All Messages list used to look the same, so a parent couldn't tell a one-on-one chat from a whole co-op announcement without opening it. Now each row carries a color-coded badge and a plain-language label, so parents can scan their inbox and know instantly what they're looking at.

A parent's cart can easily hold items from several vendors at once: a curriculum resource, a paid class sign-up, a group membership, a booked session. This update makes that mixed cart feel calm and organized instead of confusing. She can check out one vendor at a time, see exactly what type of item each thing is, and apply a promo code, all without being forced to buy everything at once.

When a free member taps into a feature that requires a paid plan, she now sees a friendly upgrade invitation instead of a dead end or a confusing error. The same easy-to-understand prompt appears whether she's trying to build a transcript, turn on text message notifications, or (for a co-op leader) enable group announcements, so members only have to learn the pattern once.

Planning a school year can feel overwhelming when you're staring at a blank page. This guided, step-by-step flow walks a parent through building a curated learning playlist for her family or a specific child: pick who it's for, choose how to build it, then fill in each subject with resources from her groups, her friends, or a search of the full library. It ends with one clean list she can review and add to her cart.

Two related screens that give parents full visibility and control over their money on MatchED. The billing page lets a subscriber see and manage every paid plan she has in one place. The purchase history page lets any parent look back at everything she's bought and pull a receipt, which matters most for families claiming state education reimbursement (ESA) funds.

A real, printable high school transcript that a parent can hand to a college admissions office with confidence, not something she has to explain or apologize for. This is the headline feature behind MatchED's Records & Reporting plan, and it walks a parent through setting up her school info, entering courses grade by grade, and getting an automatically calculated GPA and credit total at the end.

Many states require homeschool families to log a set number of instructional days per year, and this gives parents an easy daily habit for doing it. She taps today's date for each child, sees at a glance how many days she's logged toward her state's requirement, and can export a compliance-ready report at year end.

The home base for a family's whole learning life on MatchED. Four tiles give a parent an instant snapshot: what she's planning, what she's saved, what's been recorded, and what she's purchased. From there, the Library lets her browse everything she's saved for the whole family or drill into one specific child's collection, which matters most for families juggling multiple kids at different grade levels.

On a phone screen, the MatchED logo now sits centered on its own row, with the bell, cart, and profile icons lined up neatly underneath. On tablet and desktop, where there's more room, everything shares one clean row. This came directly out of the June 10 design review with Carlee.

Carlee felt the navigation icons looked too cold and gray in their default state. Every icon across the bottom nav, header, and Pathway Hub now rests in a soft warm brown that matches the MatchED palette, and switches to the signature orange only when it's the one you've tapped.

On the first screen of the Playlist Builder, where a parent picks who the playlist is for, the Family option used to show a little house icon that didn't mean anything to anyone. It's now the same simple arrow used on every student card, so the whole screen feels consistent.

The subject grid in the Playlist Builder was showing eight separate core subjects, including Reading, Writing, and Grammar as three different boxes. Following the June 10 meeting, those three now live under one combined "Language Arts" subject, so parents see a cleaner set of six clear choices instead of a cluttered list.

Below the core subjects, there used to be a full grid of elective subjects a parent had to scan through, whether they needed them or not. That's been replaced with three simple, optional buttons for Extracurriculars, Artifacts, and Custom Subjects, so nothing extra shows up unless a parent actually wants to add it.

Carlee said it plainly in the June 10 meeting: the progress bar on the subject step "should actually just be gone." The playlist name text sitting at the top of that same screen was also just noise. Both are now removed, leaving the subject step feeling lighter and more focused.

When a parent taps a subject to find curriculum for it, the sheet that opens now leads with a curated "Top Picks" style section tailored to that student's grade and family profile, instead of dropping them into an empty browse screen. The "Library" tab has also been renamed "MatchED Search" so it's clear what it actually does, and there's one less tap to reach the content itself.

If a parent is using a curriculum that isn't in MatchED yet, "Add Your Own" used to be a bare-bones form with just a title, vendor, and price. It's now a proper resource card creator, matching the same card format used everywhere else in the app, with a photo, description, and optional price. Importantly, anything created this way stays completely private to that family's own library and never shows up in MatchED Search for other members.

Previously, a parent building a playlist had no idea what it would cost until they reached the final Review step. Now, the total updates live as soon as items are added to any subject, so there are no surprises at the end, much like watching a subtotal update as you shop online.

When a parent shares a playlist with a group or friends, other members should never see the actual student's name or photo attached to it. This was a firm privacy decision the whole team agreed on in the June 10 meeting. A shared playlist now reads something like "Carly's 6th Grade Playlist," crediting the parent instead of exposing the child.

Two quick follow-up fixes after the subject-step changes shipped. The recommendation cards were rendering too tall, so parents could barely see one row of picks without scrolling. And on the Review screen, the "Add to Cart" and "Save Playlist" buttons were pinned to the bottom of the screen, leaving an odd, empty gap above them instead of sitting right below the order summary the way checkout screens normally work.

A broader pass to make the whole Playlist Builder feel like one unified tool rather than a series of loosely related screens. The grade picker and subject cards now resize gracefully whether a parent is on a phone, iPad, or desktop, and the Groups tab (where shared playlists live) got a full visual refresh to match Carlee's designs, with clear subject breakdowns instead of a plain list.

A new feature for co-op leaders and group admins on MatchED's premium subscription tier. From Group Settings, an admin can now export her group's contact list with full clarity on who is included, since some members opt out of being shared. She can download a CSV or have it emailed straight to her inbox, and the design makes this feel like a polished, trustworthy paid feature rather than a buried settings option.

A quick but important catch from reviewing the cart work below: on a wide desktop screen, the cart panel was stretching edge to edge, with buttons that looked stretched and out of place. It's a small thing, but it's the kind of detail that makes an app feel unfinished if left alone.

A round of small fixes to the member side of the app, all things that came out of reviewing the original designs closely. None of these change what Carlee built, they just make it easier for a parent to find what she needs and understand what she's clicking. Things like Friends being buried in a dropdown menu, or a "Tap to add" label that doesn't make sense on a laptop.

Cleanup around the cart and Stripe checkout experience. The cart already grouped items by vendor, but it wasn't clear whether a parent could check out one vendor at a time, so that got clarified and built out with subtotals. This also covers the button placement work that unblocked Daniel's Stripe integration.

A round of fixes to the vendor side of the app aimed at reducing confusion and surfacing the features that help vendors succeed (and help MatchED earn revenue). A vendor opening their dashboard shouldn't have to guess what a tab means or how urgent a pending request is.

Two focused fixes to Pathway, MatchED's record-keeping hub for homeschool families. Building a transcript by typing in every single course by hand was a lot of friction, and the attendance log gave parents no quick sense of how they were tracking toward their school-year goal.

A set of clarity fixes across Groups, the Bulletin, and event sign-ups. Small ambiguities, like not knowing how many slots you're committing to, or not realizing a "Register" button also means "and pay $5", add up to real friction for a busy parent trying to get her family signed up for something.

Every screen looks great once it's full of content, but a brand-new vendor or a family who just joined a group sees a blank page first. This sweep designed and built a thoughtful empty state for every major surface in the app, so day one never feels broken or unfinished. This work wasn't part of Carlee's original designs, it's new ground the team filled in.

Before diving into the Groups redesign, we set a single ruleset for how every card in the app looks: corner rounding, inner padding, and image proportions. Andrew's direction was "think Apple Store, not CVS" — cards should feel curated and portrait or square, never squat and wide. Fixing this at the base level means future changes cascade everywhere instead of needing to be patched card by card.

MatchED's primary accent color was updated app-wide, replacing the old orange with the new warm terracotta-brown (#A06B35) tone. Because the color lives in one central design setting, updating it there means every button, badge, and highlight across the entire app updated together, consistently, in one pass.

We found and fixed a bug where tapping "Join Group" could return an error instead of actually adding the member. On top of the fix, we redesigned the celebratory "You're In!" screen that appears right after joining, so the moment a parent joins a group now feels welcoming and gives her a clear next step to explore it.

Until now there was no way for a member to leave a group she'd joined. We added a clear "Leave Group" option to the group page, with a confirmation step so nobody leaves by accident.

On desktop, the tabs inside a group (Bulletin, Resources, Events, and so on) used to spread all the way across the screen, which felt loose and disconnected. They now sit together in a neat, centered panel with icons next to their labels, so the navigation reads as one cohesive control instead of scattered links.

Carlee flagged that group card images felt too thin and cropped for real uploaded photos, like a field trip or activity shot. We made the image area taller and closer to a square shape, so photos have room to breathe while staying cropped cleanly with no stretching or distortion.

Ahead of group leader onboarding, the Groups homepage got a refresh based on Carlee's feedback from our weekly meeting. There's now a persistent welcome banner above "Your Groups" with a friendly invitation to connect and a clear "Create New Group" button, the redundant "Search Groups" button was removed, and the main search bar now returns results as you type instead of requiring you to press Enter.

Inside a group's Resources tab, cards used to vary in size and stretch edge-to-edge on desktop with no margins. Carlee asked for fixed, consistent card sizing and the same comfortable side margins we've been applying elsewhere in the app. Both are now in place.

The Events tab inside a group had a layout on desktop that Carlee described as "looks funky" — mismatched cards that didn't fit the rest of the app's style. Upcoming events now display in a clean single column, the same list style used for the groups listing, with the same comfortable side margins applied elsewhere.

Brian demoed this bug live in our meeting: creating a new playlist and adding resources to it would save with a label like "curated playlist with 2 resources," but opening the playlist showed an empty list. We traced this to the resources not actually being saved to the playlist behind the scenes, and fixed the save process so they now persist correctly.

During our July 1 design session, we spotted a "Reviews" tab sitting in the group navigation bar that was never meant to be there for this release. It's been removed, and the rest of the tabs remain correctly ordered.

Also flagged during the July 1 design session on staging: creating a new post (text, image, or poll) in a group required scrolling all the way to the bottom of the form just to find the Post or Cancel buttons. That's fixed, the same issue in the poll creation form was fixed too.

Two follow-up items from our July 1 design session that the earlier Events tab work didn't fully cover: the calendar view was stuck at a narrow, mobile-sized width even on desktop, and past events were still showing in the old horizontal scroll instead of the new clean list style. Both are now resolved.

Not every adult educating a child during onboarding is the parent, sometimes it's a grandparent, guardian, or tutor. We added a fourth "Other" card to the sign-up role picker, alongside Parent, Both, and Leader, so those users feel recognized right from the start rather than forced into a category that doesn't quite fit them.

Flagged during our July 1 design session: creating a new group on desktop had scrolling and layout problems bad enough that users had to zoom in and out just to see the whole form. We also found the "Generate Images" AI button in that same form was returning an error, since that feature isn't ready for launch, the button has been hidden until it is.

Carlee flagged that the header felt cramped, with the logo and the bell, cart, and profile icons sitting too close to the top edge of the page. We increased the vertical padding evenly above and below the logo and icon row across both desktop and mobile, so the header now feels open rather than crowded.

The forms for creating a new resource or new playlist were stretching to the full width of the screen on desktop, which felt overwhelming and out of step with the rest of the app. We applied the same 70%-width, centered rule already used elsewhere, and while in there, also bumped up a font size on the course creation form that was too small.

Right now group resources, playlists, and courses don't look like the rest of the app. This work brings them in line with the card design already used in Search, so a parent sees one consistent look everywhere. Cards will also scroll sideways in a single row instead of stacking into a grid, which is how Carlee wants them to feel on both phone and desktop.

A group admin or member needs one place to see everything happening in their group and clear it by acting on it. This designs the three-tab notification view (Messages, Activity, Pending) so it feels like one connected system with the notification pages we've already shipped, not a separate style bolted on.

Playlist cards were originally built for a narrow phone screen, so on a desktop monitor they look cramped and undersized. This gives playlists a wider, taller card on bigger screens, similar to how the Library already displays them, while leaving the mobile layout untouched.

This is a bigger design project that lets one group act as a parent to other groups, for example a state coalition linking to its local co-ops. It covers requesting or inviting a group to become a subgroup, letting a parent group post to all of its subgroups at once, and giving parent admins a console to message subgroup admins and push events for their approval. None of this exists in any prototype yet, so it's being designed from scratch.

The triple-dot admin menu on event cards currently spills outside the card's edges, and the event date overlaps with it. Both need their own clean space inside the card.

When a member tries to report a resource, whether it's a broken link, duplicate, or something inappropriate, the report fails to submit. We also need to confirm reports land in an admin queue with an email alert.

When a member shares a resource into a group feed, it posts as plain text with no link back to the resource, so group members can't act on it from the feed.

After a member submits a review on a resource or playlist, it doesn't appear anywhere, and clicking the star rating doesn't show past reviews either.

Saving a group playlist looks like it succeeds, but the playlist never shows up in the user's library, and there's no option to choose a specific student versus the family library the way resource saving offers.

Adding an entire playlist to the cart shows a success message, but opening the cart afterward shows nothing there. The action isn't actually being saved.

The section that holds files like waivers, schedules, and code-of-conduct documents is currently labeled "Downloads," which doesn't quite describe what's there. Renaming it to "Attachments" is clearer.

The same resource can show a different image depending on where you're viewing it, for example the group resource list versus the resource's own detail page. We need to standardize which image is treated as the source of truth.

Pressing "Save to family library" on a group resource looks successful, but the resource never actually appears in the library, and there's no option to assign it to a specific student.

Clicking delete on a resource doesn't actually remove it, only archiving works today. Separately, the delete confirmation popup renders far too wide on screen.

Several resource actions look like they work in the moment but are never actually saved to the backend: creating a resource, editing one, pinning it to the top, copying it, and archiving or unarchiving. Refreshing the page undoes all of them. We've already fixed this same pattern for playlists, so the same approach applies here.

Typing into the search box on a group's feed or posts tab currently returns nothing. Per Carlee, results should ideally start appearing as someone types.

Clicking a pinned item on the bulletin board only shows the title, author, timestamp, and text, with no images or ability to like or comment. It should open the same full card experience as the feed, matched to whether it's a post, event, or resource.

Both "Pin to top of feed" and "Pin to bulletin" appear to work when clicked, but the pin disappears as soon as the page is refreshed, since the action isn't being saved to the backend.

Several core feed interactions are broken in the same way: posting an image fails outright, comments show a success message but vanish and never appear, replying to a comment does nothing, and likes disappear after a refresh. Carlee flagged this directly during our July 1 session.

A set of smaller UX improvements flagged during an earlier design review, aimed at making a few vendor-side settings easier to notice and understand. These are flagged observations rather than committed changes, and any work here happens at Brian's discretion.