Applications Module

Project Overview

The applications module is inside the my.utep.edu student portal on their dashboard. It allows the students to access all the applications they have available.

The goal of this project was to identify any usability issues with the existing module and determine the critical features to prioritize for the next iteration of the product.

This is one of the multiple research projects the we have done for this application.

Role

User Research, Interaction, Visual Design, Prototyping & Testing

January 2021 - March 2021

Background

The my.utep.edu UX/UI team consist of two designers, I am one of them. I am responsible for leading UX and UI design across the application.

my.utep.edu has over 4,571,332 users per year.

The Process

Understanding
Define
Ideate
Test
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Understanding the problem

We conducted research interviews with our primary users (the students) to find any paint points that were experiencing with the existing application.
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The research covered the following:

Understand user needs and goals.
Find user pain point with the existing applications module.
Determine the success of the tasks.
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Gathering Insights

After conducted the interviews we analyzed the data by grouping all the insights.

Insights found:

70% of the participants mentioned that the font size of the application names was too small.
50% of the participants said that is was time consuming finding the icon they needed.
60% of the participants mentioned that there were too many applications that they do not use.
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Applications Module During the Interviews (Before)

Possible Solutions

Increase the font size on the app names and add more color contrast by changing the color from gray to black.
Add colors to the icons and make them bigger to help the user to distinguish them.
Allow the user to customize what applications display on the module by adding and removing them.
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High Fidelity Wireframes

Desktop Applications Module with Possible Solutions

Desktop Applications Module example when the user clicks on the customize button.

Applications Module example when the user cliks on the customize button

Validate possible solutions

To validate the possible solutions two user-experience research methods were conducted Usability Test and Interviews.

Usability Test - We conducted an in-person usability test with the students (the participants) by creating a mobile and desktop functional prototype with possible solutions using the InVision app. During this test, the functionality of customization of the applications was tested by asking the participants to complete some tasks.

Interviews - We met with the students one-on-one to discuss in depth what they think about the new prototype. Information about their preferences, feelings, and opinions was collected.

The My.UTEP.edu app is used by three different student personas:

Freshman Students
International Students
Graduates Students

The research was conducted with 15 students, 5 of each persona.
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Develop Designs

After I tested the possible solutions and they worked. The solutions were added to the MY UTEP high fidelity mockups on InVision so the web developers’ team and QA team can access to them and see all the specs.
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