A personalized experience matters. Whether you're an admin overseeing operations, a librarian managing digital assets, or a student navigating assignments — role-specific dashboards streamline access, reduce cognitive load, and improve productivity. Here’s how we designed ours.
Step 1: Understanding Roles & Responsibilities
Before diving into UI design, we conducted stakeholder interviews and analyzed user journeys for each role:
- Admins need access to analytics, system logs, and user management.
- Librarians focus on catalog curation, resource requests, and metadata updates.
- Students want quick access to courses, assignments, deadlines, and grades.
Step 2: Backend Role Logic
We implemented role-based logic using Laravel's policy system and middleware. Every route checks the authenticated user's role and redirects appropriately. This ensures users can't “accidentally” access other roles’ data, even via direct URLs.
// Laravel example:
Route::middleware(['role:admin'])->group(function () {
Route::get('/admin/dashboard', [AdminController::class, 'index']);
});
Step 3: Tailoring UI with Blade Components
Using Laravel Blade components, we built reusable dashboard widgets. Each role loads a different layout:
<x-admin.stats-card /><x-librarian.request-queue /><x-student.upcoming-assignments />
Step 4: Dashboard Widgets by Role
Admin Dashboard
- Real-time user activity
- System health & logs
- Staff performance metrics
Librarian Dashboard
- Pending content approvals
- Digital asset upload queue
- Metadata inconsistencies
Student Dashboard
- Upcoming deadlines
- Grade summaries
- Recent course announcements
Step 5: Progressive Disclosure
We avoided overwhelming users by using collapsible widgets and progressive loading. Students, for example, only see grading analytics if they click “View Details.” Librarians can expand panels to see overdue tasks without clutter.
Step 6: Access Control & Security
Every API and view respects access control using policies. Even though the frontend hides unauthorized sections, the backend enforces it too. Logs are tracked for permission errors, helping identify if any bypass attempts occur.
Step 7: Mobile First
Bootstrap grid made it easy to adapt dashboards for mobile. On phones:
- Admin charts collapse into scrollable cards
- Students get a compact view with collapsible assignments
Final Thoughts
Designing role-based dashboards isn’t just a UI exercise—it’s a holistic process involving UX research, backend logic, component reuse, and security enforcement. The result? A cleaner, faster, and safer LMS experience tailored to each user’s purpose.