Kindertales

Childcare providers were piecing together separate tools for enrollment, billing, and family communication. At Kindertales, I helped bring that work into one platform for the office, the classroom, and home.

RoleHead of Product Design / Senior Product Manager

Timeframe2014–2024

Reach160,000+ daily active users

PlatformsDesktop and mobile

The process

Designing for the whole day.

Follow the work across roles

I interviewed providers and parents to understand what each person needed and where their work overlapped. A teacher recording a milestone and a parent checking in at lunch were two sides of the same interaction. The teacher needed to capture it quickly. The parent needed enough context to understand what happened.

Decide what belonged together

I worked with product and engineering on a roadmap that brought child records, classroom updates, communication, and billing together. I owned the billing UX across both sides of a payment: families needed to understand and pay their balance, and the office needed a financial record it could manage.

Shape each experience with providers

I used wireframes, prototypes, and usability testing with childcare providers to refine the workflows. On desktop there was room to compare records and plan ahead. In the classroom, every extra step was time an educator spent looking at a screen.

Outcomes

Kindertales at scale

As a founding team member, I spent a decade shaping the Kindertales roadmap and leading product design, including the billing tools families used to pay for childcare.

160,000+Daily active users across web and mobile

$1B+ USDCumulative payments processed by the billing platform whose UX I owned

3 countriesSupported by our work with enterprise providers including Kids & Company, YMCA, Grandir, and Babilou

01 / Administrative staff · Desktop

Running a childcare business.

For administrators, an inquiry in the CRM is the start of a much longer relationship. That family may later need a place in a classroom, an enrollment form, and a bill. We brought those tasks into the same web portal as staff management, reporting, and analytics. I designed the desktop experience to support both the individual record and the wider view an operator needs to plan across classrooms.

CRM dashboard with inquiry records and charts — CRM and Reporting

Enrollment planning tables and classroom schedules — Enrollment and Graduation Planning

Staff web portal dashboard — Administrative Dashboard

02 / Teachers · Classroom tablet

Record the day while it happens.

A teacher might have a moment to record a milestone while the rest of the class is already moving on. I designed around the classroom roster so educators could find a child, capture the activity, and get back to the room. Those entries also formed the daily summary and updates families could see.

Classroom roster on the staff tablet — Classroom View

Milestone record on the staff tablet — Capture a Milestone

03 / Parents · Mobile and web

A window into the classroom.

I designed the parent feed around a simple question: how is my child’s day going? Updates from educators put photos and activities in one place. The same family account also handled payments and forms. Parents could check their balance on a phone or use the web portal for longer enrollment forms.

Parent feed displaying classroom updates — Classroom Updates

Billing and account balance in the parent app — Family Billing

Registration welcome screen in the parent app — Getting Registered

04 / Beyond the screen

A name that grew with us.

I came up with the name Kindertales during an early brainstorming session. From the first pitch materials to a trade show booth, I wanted the identity to feel at home in childcare and credible to the people running a business.