Introducing A Much Needed Application For The RIT Students
Overview
Tiger Center is a class enrollment system that was developed by students at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) as an alternative to Student Information System (SIS). Features such as class search, schedule, grades, academics are few features of Tiger center web application.
This is not a detailed case study of the project but rather explained in high level. For detailed case study please contact me.
Requirement
The Student IT office (SITO) at RIT has recruited me as a part-time web designer (UX) to re-design the whole application since the current design had a significant learning curve which involved in getting even the most fundamental task accomplished. Managing academics and working 20 hours a week for five months and with a cross functional team of front end and back end developers, business analysts and a product owner, not to mention that it was challenging especially with up-front targets but had a wonderful experience solving the problems.
Process
Since the fundamental feature of Tiger Center is to facilitate the enrollment into classes, each of the users were given a high-level goal of planning to enroll into a class during the contextual inquiry. During the contextual inquiry of first-time Tiger Center users, we observed that there was a significant learning curve involved in getting even the most fundamental task accomplished. Overall, the users found the interface to be visually appealing but unintuitive. For example, users searched for keywords such as “enroll” or “add class” when looking to enroll into classes. As a result, they made assumptions about the function of certain controls on the interface and were surprised when the system did not react as expected. A survey was also conducted later and further analyzed before starting the actual wireframes.
Based on the results of the survey and contextual inquiry process, the wireframes were sketched. Every steps was keenly scrutinized to make sure that there could be no flaws for the next version. Post wire framing process, the UI designs were designed using Photoshop cc and Illustrator cc (Due to the windows availability in the office). The initial prototype was built using the Invision web application, to test with the students.
Presenting Through
Story Boards
Story boards have clearly helped to communicate the scenarios with the main stake holders to get the buy-ins. For example below is the story board to explain one of the use case scenario which is enrolling into a class.
Problem Scenario:
Solution Scenario:
Below are few selected screens of the application. Tiger Center can now be assessable by both students and anyone who wish to know about the courses offered as a guest user.
Our Business Analysts have successfully managed to convince the collaboration with the financial department and other services. Hence below are the screens if financial data of student is shown. We named it as Portal Design and pushed it for phase-2 release.
