Putting campus IDs in pockets everywhere.
The Blackboard Transact App
Blackboard, one of the biggest names in education technology, powers information for systems for many of the country’s top colleges and universities. One of Blackboard’s key differentiators is its unified credential platform, Transact, which brings campus security, financial transactions, attendance records, event admission, and more together into a single, convenient campus ID. We completely reimagined the Transact app and helped Blackboard navigate a secret, high-stakes collaboration with Apple to bring support for campus ID cards to Apple Wallet.
Contributions
- Product Strategy
- iOS Development
- Motion Design
- Android Development
One card to rule them all.
Credentials power life on campus. They’re used for everything from unlocking doors to borrowing books from the library to buying meals and snacks, by everyone from students to faculty and administrators to hourly campus employees. The Blackboard Transact platform provides schools with a single, streamlined way to manage identity, permissions, and transactions.
While key cards and fobs have been around for years, mobile devices have trailed glaringly in contactless utility on college campuses. Until recently, Apple heavily restricted use of the iPhone’s NFC sensors, but thanks to a special partnership with Cupertino and early access to new Core NFC APIs, contactless payments and permissions are now at the core of the Transact mobile app, complete with Apple Wallet integration.
Variations on a theme.
Step on to any college campus and it’s immediately clear that schools loves their brands. The logo, colors, and crest adorn buildings as far as the eye can see and students rock campus swag everywhere you look. With so much school spirit in the mix, we opted to give Transact a flexible, brand-agnostic interface that lets each school’s unique vibe shine through without compromising aesthetics or usability.
Accessible by design.
Moving brand and color targets can pose a challenge for accessibility, since few institutions choose their colors with contrast in mind. We validated all interface designs rigorously across a range of color configurations and created detailed color and typesetting guidelines to govern theme customization.
Wear your card on your sleeve.
We partnered with Apple to integrate Transact with Wallet on watchOS and let users open doors, pay for things, log class attendance, and more all with a simple raise of the wrist.
Our work on Transact’s watchOS integration was featured in Apple’s 2018 WWDC keynote.