Product
Baims Teacher Portal
A six-week teacher self-service portal followed by a reported 20% drop in monthly operating costs.
Overview
Teachers should not need a middleman to change their own course
Baims instructors depended on teacher assistants for routine work. Changing a course price, adding content, checking performance, or updating account details all passed through another person. Small edits became queues, and queues created delays and errors.
I was a Product Designer at Baims. I worked with Product Designer Sina Sultani, Co-Founder and CTO Bader Al-Rasheed, and a wider eight-person team. We designed the web portal in six weeks in early 2023 and completed it around March.
The portal gave teachers direct control over their subjects, courses, content, profile, financial details, and performance data. Admin users kept oversight across teacher accounts and content.
-20%
monthly operating costs
Reported by Baims after launch
6 weeks
Research to final design
Web portal
4
Core workflow areas
Content, account, finance, and performance
Problem
Every small edit had a human queue behind it
Teachers relied on assistants to manage course content and financial information. A price change, a new course, or a content update could stall while the request moved between people. Teachers had limited access to their own content data, while assistants spent time on work teachers could handle themselves.
The portal had to move routine control to teachers while keeping the checks the admin team needed. Personal and financial information still had to stay clear, the existing subject and course structure had to remain intact, and long video uploads needed visible progress states.
Research
Four teacher interviews exposed the operations problem behind the interface
I used four in-depth interviews with highly active teachers, an email survey, and close input from the operations team. The data team helped us analyze the responses and define two working profiles: instructors and teacher assistants who managed content.
Teachers wanted direct access to course data. They were frustrated by delays and repeated handoffs. Assistants were spending long hours on routine requests and wanted more of that work handled inside the product.
The product needed to cover subjects, courses, sections, lectures, personal details, financial information, and performance data. Admin users still needed a wider view across every teacher.
Ideation
The best request flow was to remove the request
We could improve the assistant request process or remove routine requests from it. I designed the portal around direct teacher control. Teachers could make common changes themselves, while admins kept access to the same records and wider account controls.
A flat course list would become hard to scan as instructors added more material. I kept the subject, course, section, and lecture hierarchy visible. Teachers started with a subject, opened its courses, then edited sections and lectures inside the selected course.
Video processing could take time. I designed separate upload states for started, processing, and complete, then let processing continue in the background. Teachers could leave the upload view and return when the file was ready.
Designs
The portal followed the way teachers already organized their course work
I turned the product model into wireframes, final UI, and a working prototype. The main subjects page let teachers search, filter, and add subjects. Each subject opened into an overview with performance data, subject details, and its course list.
Inside a course, teachers could add or edit sections and lectures. Upload states showed whether a video had started, was processing, or had finished. The profile area held personal and financial information, while the admin side gave the internal team a wider view across teachers and content.
Teachers from different backgrounds tested the prototype in Maze before the final design.
Lessons
Self-service worked because admin oversight stayed inside the product
The portal launched, and Baims reported a 20% reduction in monthly operating costs after release.
During the same growth period, Baims raised a $4.4 million Series A.
The project put teacher control and admin oversight in the same system. Teachers handled routine updates directly, while the admin view supported account support and content oversight.
