Examples of the Classroom, Curbside and Parent apps mocked into devices are overlaid on the image of a mom smiling in the rear view mirror at her little boy in the backseat. Examples of the Classroom, Curbside and Parent apps mocked into devices are overlaid on the image of a mom smiling in the rear view mirror at her little boy in the backseat.

Client

Extrafeet

Industry

Mobile Application

Our Role

Animation & Video, Illustration, Mobile App Development, UX Design, UI Design

ALL SOLUTIONS

Beeline Pickups School Dismissal System

The client

Extrafeet is the sister company to Skyward Interactive, specializing in game and app development.

The challenge

The traditional school dismissal process has long been a source of frustration for everyone involved. Sticky notes, clipboards, walkie talkies, and bullhorns have been the tools of choice for managing this chaotic routine. Kids wait anxiously in hallways or on curbs, sometimes ending up in the wrong car. It's a time-consuming and occasionally risky ordeal. With the 2020 Pandemic increasing that chaos with social distancing, schools were looking for help. Having expertise in location based apps, members of Extrafeet and Skyward teamed up to create a solution.

Our response

We developed Beeline, a smart school dismissal system that brings innovation, simplicity, and safety to the carpool line.

Our requirements:

Illustration of a car entering the pickup lane. A teacher outside confirms their arrival. A teacher inside dismisses kids. Illustration of a car entering the pickup lane. A teacher outside confirms their arrival. A teacher inside dismisses kids.

When examining competing dismissal systems in the market, we noted that many require everything from per-student variable licensing fees or expensive physical hardware such as license plate scanning hardware. Instead, Beeline leverages parent and teacher smartphones to streamline the dismissal process, providing real-time visibility into the carpool line without the need for any additional hardware or driver interaction.

Driver Detection: The driver's smartphone detects geofences or mobile beacons around the pickup area to report that driver’s arrival into the carpool line.

Carpool Line Workers: Our staff app, called “Curbside” empowers teachers with a real-time list of drivers in the cars they are overseeing, giving staff outside the school the power to add or review cars in line and eliminating issues such as those caused by phones without internet or drivers without a smartphone.

Cars wait in the pickup line in the background. A phone is in the foreground, displaying a list of the drivers in line. Cars wait in the pickup line in the background. A phone is in the foreground, displaying a list of the drivers in line.

Centralized System: A central system records and distributes line information to each classroom, allowing teachers and students to see which kids have parents arriving at school and who should be preparing to leave directly from whichever classroom or dismissal area that student is in.

Efficient Location Management: Geofences and smartphones-as-beacons provide always-on background location tracking, managed by the driver's OS with negligible power drain and zero required driver interaction.

Record keeping: Each kid's delivery is timestamped for administrators and parents to track. Beeline users can review pickup schedules with dates, times, and locations, along with emergency contact information.

Our go to market strategy was to rely on tools that are effectively free to us, good product design, good SEO and ASO practices and good customer service. Utilizing tools like free trials, complimentary branded car hang-tags and personalized demos, we’ve managed to onboard hundreds of schools without any advertising spend. Schools that continue to use Beeline beyond their free trial pay an affordable yearly subscription fee.

Beeline is currently available for download in the App Store in the United States and is soon expanding into additional countries. Visit the Beeline website to learn more.

Collage of the Beeline driver app interface, app tiles, and Classroom app interface. Collage of the Beeline driver app interface, app tiles, and Classroom app interface.