SARAH WEST
Redesign of BYUI Academic Offerings
AT A GLANCE
7
Full Iterations
4
Team Members
70+
Usability Tests
1
Team Meeting Weekly
Overview
When I was employed by the UX Department at Brigham Young University Idaho I was asked to join a project that had previously been started: The Academic Offerings page. This page serves the 20,000+ students on campus and helps them to explore and change their degree path. New degree types are going to be offered so the team was tasked with producing a new design and layout that will include those and guide students through the different options available.
MY ROLES
UX/UI Designer (Testing, prototyping, etc)
DURATION
5-6 Months
CLIENT
Brigham Young University Idaho
Academic Advising
This is the currently active page that students are using. No options are available until a degree is searched, and the pages leaves students wondering what they should be doing.
Joining the Project
The designer who had previously been working on the project had completed previous user interviews and testing in order to create the general flow of the design. When he was assigned a different project I was brought onto Academic Offerings along with 2 other designers.
This was the design direction when I came onto the project.
User Testing
The first step was to test the design and get a better understanding of who are users were. Our team went out and tested it on 13 individuals.
The overall flow was easy to go through and the elements are there. Having the options upfront caused students to like the new design over the old.
The most issues were found with the following elements:
Students wanted more information from the degree cards
The edit button was how they had to include a minor, but most students expected the 'Add to Grad Planner' to do so. Also, the back button went to the beginning not the last page.
After testing, I was put in charge of the degree cards and looking into color schemes. Meanwhile team members worked on clarifying other sections of the pages
Meeting with Stakeholders
Each of the team members presented the section they were doing work on. My presentation was on Interdisciplinary Studies. For each section we were told that it would be difficult for faculty to separate the degrees into a specific interest group. From previous tests however, we knew there needed to be some way to help limit choices and worked on a solution that would be easy to create and beneficial to the students.
Also, it was discussed how the cards were still rather bulky in design and the stakeholders wanted more degrees to show up on the page at one time.
We changed the 'Interest Area' into 'Filtering by Area'. By using the colleges the list of degrees would already have a set place to show up in. The cards also were arranged in a way that tightened up the design and made it more professional.
Changes were made to the catalog page due to students misunderstanding previous designs.
Plan Summary was made to match the rest of the design.
Troubles with the Catalog
Our crew went on campus to see how our changes would fare. We have been testing in person and it helps to gauge some of the reactions our users have. This round included 15 user tests. Our main goals of testing was to see if the new card design worked well and also to see if the catalog page was less confusing.
While the degree layout was received well, the catalog year design stops the students progress. After discussing with the Project Manager and other team members, I designed another catalog page that focused more on how many credits were left to complete. We did some quick testing but, along with several students not knowing what a catalog year is, something still halted the viewer. After reviewing test recordings, I found that students aren't connecting the catalog page to the degree they chose on the page before. So how do we make that connection?
Several iterations were made on the catalog design
The above design was one solution that had the goal of letting students know there was another step in the process. But, after about 5 more tests, we noticed students were used to just clicking through messages without reading them. That's when a team member suggested an accordion style catalog page, which resulted in the design below.
The accordion style catalog was more related to the degree chosen and also focused on credits being taken. A win-win solution to our problem!.
Always
Playing
Edit Pages
Now that we figured out the catalog design we could move forward on designing the edit pages. I was placed in charge of that due to the similar feature on the Interdisciplinary Study pages.
Students need to have a component in each section. So, options would be blocked off until that requirement is met.
After several iterations, we found this design to be the best. The color was still a bit much for the page however.
These became the final designs that would move onto our last rounds of user testing
Validation User Tests
With the help of the entire team we went out to validate all the changes made up to this point. After completing around 20 tests, we found that students were able to more fully navigate the site. There were several students with exclamations like, "This is so much better than the old one" or "It was super easy".
Our design was ready to be moved onto the next phase.
Final Results
I'll take you through one of the scenarios used in our usability studies. This flow will follow an Interdisciplinary Studies degree as that is the area I designed in the most. So imagine your a Sophomore college student looking to explore if you'd like to change to an Interdisciplinary degree....
Start by creating an alternate plan
You want to stay on campus for your degree
Scroll to find Interdisciplinary Studies
Time to begin planning
Agriculture Technology sounds interesting
That upper catalog has less credits, so you choose that one
You wouldn't mind having a cluster after reading the description
You are curious about the other options available
You actually want an Agronomy cluster and so need to change your concentration
You decide on an Arts and Humanities concentration
Those options aren't interesting after all - cancel editing
You decide on an Art Fundamentals cluster instead
Last piece! Go for a certificate.
Business and Leadership Skills would fit.
Only 12 credits! That option for sure
It's all set to plan classes. Create your plan
Conclusion
This project was an adventure for me. While we did have a demographic of students, that could be split into several different types of people: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, International, In-state, etc.. etc.. etc.. How could we meet the basic need of choosing a major for the majority of BYUI students? It was fun to work with my design team and discover the potential solutions to answer that question. We went through several iterations, tests, and team discussions to reach a solution that excited students and achieved our goals.