WebSTAC Redesign

Brief

The WebSTAC Redesign case study describes the design process of a redesign of the course registration function of WebSTAC, the academic portal for students at Washington University in St. Louis. This is a team project (three members) done as the second big project of the university course, UX Research Methods for Design, aimed to address problems faced by students at the university. All three members were involved in every step of the design process from primary and secondary research to ideation. Due to time constraints, the project only progressed until ideation.The redesign includes a feature to check major/minor/general course requirements for graduation and an additional feature to recommend similar courses.

My Role

• UX Research

Problem

From personal and peer experiences, figuring out courses for the next semester can be:

• Confusing
• Not streamlined
• Chaotic
• Consequential
• Time-consuming

Assumptions

Below are our assumptions:

• Students are not going into course registration without some sort of goal or intent. Every student knows to some extent what kind of classes they would like to take.
• Students would like to see improvement in the the course registration process. These improvements do not involve uncontrollable processes such as limited class seats and time slot selection.

Primary Research

We interviewed students across all four years and at graduate levels at the university. We were also able to receive responses from them through a survey. We received responses from 9 interviews and 61 surveys. We were not able to interview advisors and developers or send them surveys as we would have liked.

Below are our interview questions:

1. Tell us how you plan for your future schedule for your degree (tools, techniques, etc.).
2. What do you consider when you plan for your future classes?
3. Have you heard of and/or used WUAchieve?
4. Tell us about a time you had a successful scheduling experience if you had any.
5. Tell us about a time you had problems with scheduling if you had any.
6. Tell us about your experience with your advisors at the university.
7. What do you think of the current system used for registration?
8. Are you satisfied with the courses you’ve taken? Why or why not?

Below are our survey questions:

We asked about:

• Basic information such as school, year, and degree program
• Course planning information
• Course registration information
• Experience with the university's default degree tracking tool, WUAchieve
• Experience with university advising

Secondary research

We analyzed competitors products such as registration portals of other universities and common scheduling tools used by students. We conducted our analysis using the 10 usability heuristics.

Our research targets are divided into three categories university course registration systems, digital planning tools, and analog planning tools.

University Course Registration Systems

Targets

• University of Washington
• Washington University in St. Louis
• University of Texas System
• University of Buffalo

Findings

• Generally convoluted
• Designs are not very minimalist - they are archaic and lack a good information architecture
• They are fairly consistent with one another in terms of features

Digital Planning Tools

Targets

• Google Docs
• Google Sheets + Excel
• Notion
• Coursicle

Findings

• Very flexible and give a lot of freedom for personalization
• Fairly efficient to use
• Have what one would expect from planning tools
• Some offer more features than others and can be a bit overwhelming for first timers
• There are keyboard shortcuts for people who are experienced with the tools

Analog Planning Tools

Targets

• Pen + Paper

Findings

• Flexible and can be personalized
• Time consuming
• Hard to find and correct mistakes

Affinity Mapping

We created two affinity maps: one for our survey results and one for our interview results.

Below are our key findings:

• People believe a lot of common tasks such as adding classes from their four-year plan and checking for conflicts with currently registered classes should be made easier.
• People want a way to find and add last minute classes faster in case they cannot enroll in the class they had wanted.
• People prioritize major and minor course requirements when registering for classes, but it's not always easy to see what classes they are still missing.
• Many people want to take courses outside of their major and minor out of interest.
• Other factors that come into play when registering for classes are professors, classmates, and difficulty of the course.
• People often use planning tools unrelated to the portal such as excel and google sheets to plan for their future courses.
• It is not the easiest task to find certain classes on webSTAC's course listings.

Personas & Journey maps

We created three unique personas with their own respective journey map in the context of course registration. This will help us empathize with people who could potentially use our product and make design decisions accordingly.

Problem Statements

After creating our personas and journey maps, we wrote problem statements for each of them.

Brainstorming

Every member of the group conducted an 8-box brainstorm to create potential solutions to address the pain points and needs we have identified.

Roadmapping

We created a roadmap using all potential solutions and prioritized them based on how much they would address the problem statements of our personas (impact) and how much change it would require on the back-end (feasibility).

Site Map & User Flow

We created a site map for two features: one to view major/minor course requirements simultaneously and one to view courses similar to the one currently selected. We also created a user flow for our persona Anamika to ensure that our flow is feasible.

Mockups

We created simple mockups for our solutions. The green shows where they would be on the current WebSTAC interface.

Takeaways & Future Directions

Takeaways

• Course planning and course registration can look very different for students from different degree programs.
• Redesigning an university system is complicated because it requires changes on an administrative level
• There are also non-digital ways to improve the system such as improving relationships with advisors

Future Directions

• Interview advisors who have years of experience with course registration and get their insights on the current system​​
• Interview developers behind the current system to gauge feasibility of proposed changes
• Try different primary research methods (e.g., love/break up letters)