Wolverine Access Interactive Advisement Heuristic Evaluation
Kumud Bihani Mohammad Hadrawi Andrea McVittie Ning Wang
Product Summary: Wolverine Access The Wolverine Access (WA) system is an online web application for accessing and managing an individuals information related to the University of Michigan. Access is given to students and their families, alumni, faculty and staff. Depending on a users role, different types of the user's account information can be managed through the system, including course schedules, contact information, housing information, and payroll options. A new version of Wolverine Access is going to be launched within the next six months for use by the University of Michigan community. This upgrade will include a significant change in the interface, as well as the inclusion of many new features. Included in these new features will be the "Interactive Advisement" module. This report will focus specifically on this new feature.
Wolverine Access Interactive Advisement Interactive Advisement will allow students to view their degree progress by displaying their program's academic requirements. The system will indicate which requirements have been fulfilled and which have not. Below each requirement, a list of courses that would count towards fulfilling that requirement will be listed, along with how many credits the course is worth, and when it is offered. This new advisement portion of the service will also eventually allow students to examine the impact on their academic advancement if they switch to a new major for their studies. A report detailing how their earned credits will transfer between degree programs will be generated and sent to the student. Users will access advisement through a new section called "Self Service". (Figure 1.)
Figure 1.
The student will then need to select "My Academic Requirements" under the "Degree Progress/Graduation" section (Figure 2.)
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Figure 2.
Once the student has selected "My Academic Requirements" they will be presented with the automatically generated report detailing their academic progress. (Figure 3.) Figure 3.
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Target Audience Wolverine Access is used by and intended to serve all enrolled University of Michigan students. For the Winter 2008 semester, there are 37,851 students registered. This population is made up of 24,786 undergraduate students and 13,065 graduate students.[1] Wolverine Access System Users – Winter 2008
The undergraduate population consists of students enrolled in over 200 different degree programs. Incoming Freshman arrive from over 1650 different high schools. The undergraduate population originates from all 50 states and out-of-state undergraduate students make up over one-third of that population. The undergraduate population includes students from over 80 foreign countries. Four percent of undergraduates are international students. One quarter of the undergraduate population is African American, Hispanic American, Native American, or Asian American. The gender distribution of undergraduate students is approximately 50/50.[2]
In addition to enrolled students, 180,000 Alumni are also granted access to portions of the system in order to access their transcripts.[1]
Teaching staff is also supported by Wolverine Access. Currently, 6,610 total faculty members are registered users. Of those, 5,025 faculty members are teaching during the Winter 2008 semester, while the rest have taught courses within the last year.[1]
The Wolverine Access system is also used by 6,800 users with administrative access who enter data, run reports and view information. These users are members of a variety of departments including Payroll, Benefits, Human Resources, Recruiting, Admissions, Curriculum, Academic Advising, Student Services, Student Financials, and the Financial Aid office. Also included in this group of users is the Wolverine Access Support Staff.[1]
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Wolverine Access System User Types – Winter 2008
The Interactive Advisement portion of Wolverine Access will be mostly used by the enrolled student population including undergraduates, graduate and professional students.
Goals & Methodology A heuristic evaluation provides a quick method for assessing the usability of an interface design. This type of assessment can be conducted using a minimal amount of staff while still providing a relatively thorough list of usability issues in a system. In using this method, the team hoped to identify most of the usability problems within the Wolverine Access design so that they can be addressed during the continuing development of the system. To accomplish this task, the team compared the interface of the Wolverine Access Interactive Advisement System against Nielsen's Heuristics for Usable Interface Design.[3] Nielsen’s Heuristics are detailed in Table 1 on the following page.
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Table 1: Nielsen's Heuristics for Usable Interface Design #
HEURISTIC
DESCRIPTION
1
Visibility of system status
The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
2
Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
3
User control and freedom
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
4
Consistency and standards
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
5
Error prevention
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
6
Recognition rather than recall
Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
7
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
8
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
9
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
Help and documentation
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
10
6
Our team of four began our assessment of the Wolverine Access "Interactive Advisement" system by first individually reviewing the list of ten heuristics. (Table 1.) Once familiar with this list, team members each identified a few common user tasks through which we would explore the site. Tasks were identified by making use of the personas the team had created. (See Appendix) These personas were fictional users based upon compiled interviews conducted with actual users of the current Wolverine Access system. From these personas, corresponding use scenarios were written. Once a user scenario was created, tasks each persona was likely to want to complete were selected. Each team member then proceeded to complete their identified user tasks, step by step, using the Wolverine Access test environment. At each step, the website and it's functionality was evaluated on the basis of each of heuristic. Assessment was accomplished both by looking at a heuristic and then seeking violations of that rule, and by discovering difficulties in task completion and then finding the appropriate heuristic label for that issue. When an issue was found, members made note of which page the issue occurred on, what heuristic was effected, and wrote down a brief description of the problem found, as well as a rating of how serious they felt this issues was for the usability of the site. The ratings ranged from 0 to 4 and were based upon the Severity Ratings provided by Jakob Nielsen.[4] Table 2: Nielsen's Severity Ratings for Usability Problems RATING
DESCRIPTION
0
I don't agree that this is a usability problem at all
1
Cosmetic problem only: need not be fixed unless extra time is available on project
2
Minor usability problem: fixing this should be given low priority
3
Major usability problem: important to fix, so should be given high priority
4
Usability catastrophe: imperative to fix this before product can be released
Once each member had completed their own individual assessment, the notes were compiled into one spreadsheet (Table 4). From this table, the team analyzed the data and assessed the general usability of the system. We also averaged the total of all over our severity ratings in order to generate a team severity rating. From this number the team was able to determine what the most important items were and therefore prioritize which items should be addressed first.
Findings The heuristic evaluation of the Wolverine Access Interactive Advisement revealed overall a fairly usable system. The team identified several positive usability features, as well as noting several areas where improvements can be made.
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Summary of Findings Usability Strengths: • •
System Status is visible to the user Navigation is stable throughout the site and uses a familiar hierarchy style
Usability Issues: • • •
Labels are not used consistently Navigation standards not always followed Terms are not always ones a user would be familiar with
Heuristic Evaluation Results The following tables (Table 3 & Table 4) contain the results of our heuristic evaluation of the Wolverine Access system. While our focus is on the Interactive Advisement portion of the system, some of the following results apply to the system as a whole, and not just the Advisement feature.
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Table 3: Usability Strengths Evaluator Key:
Page Id #
E1: Andrea
E2: Kumud
Page Name
E3: Ning
Heuristic
3
Degree Progress/Graduation
3
3
Degree Progress/Graduation
2
5
My Academics Requirement(2)
6
E4: Mohammad
2nd Heuristic
Evaluator E3
Good use of icons to depict the text
E2
6
Before the requirement is given, the meaning of the icon is given to make the icon easily retrievable.
E3
View Degree Progress Report
5
The system offer text to prevent user's error in the waiting process.
E3
6
View Degree Progress Report
10
10
Course Schedule
5
13
Add to planner
1
18
Create what-If Scenario
10
20
Student Center
2
All
1
All
2
All
4
All
6
All
8
All
1
6
Description Users can choose whether to show the left bar or just use the center part, which is a customization.
The system shows to users how to use the system using three lines of plain text. This guideline can help the users to correctly use the system. The system can tell user whether they can select the class. After adding class to planner, there is a sentence right under the header of the page telling a user that he has successfully add the course to his planner. For each portion of the report, there is a help text to facilitate the user creating the report. The text is not long and helpful. Nice way of showing number of steps (Transfer Credit Page) The highlighted Self Service at the left bar and the header of the content clearly tell users the status of the system. The design of the system browsing makes use of the design of system browsing in operating systems. for example, the layout of this page is much the same like that of the Microsoft Windows system, making users easy to learn how to use. All the pages are in the same theme. On the upper right corner, there are some functions that are most used, such as log out. Users can log out at every page conveniently. goto menu is present at beginning and end of each page the users are aware of the state of the system because "Processing" is displayed while the user waits
E3 E3 E3 E3 E4 E3 E3 E3 E3 E2 E2
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Table 4: Identified Usability Issues Evaluator Key:
E1: Andrea
E2: Kumud
E3: Ning
E4: Mohammad Severity Ranking
Page Id #
Page Name
Heuristic
2
Self Service
4
2
Self Service
4
3 3 3 3 3 3 7
Degree Progress/Graduation Degree Progress/Graduation Degree Progress/Graduation Degree Progress/Graduation Degree Progress/Graduation Degree Progress/Graduation View academic requirement(1) V.2
All
2nd Heuristic
4 4
2
4 4
9 9 4
1
Main Menu
9
1
Main Menu
4
1
Main Menu
2
1
Main Menu
2
1
Main Menu
4
The two links connect to two different pages Two identical looking "My Academics" links follow one another - they lead to two different places There are two My academic requirements buttons under Degree Progress/ Graduation section. They have different usage but the same name.
4
5
Description There are two My academic requirements buttons under Degree Progress/ Graduation section and the descriptions of the two functions are the same. However, they have different usage but the same name. There are two different "My Academic" Links that are shown together, and lead to two different places There are two "My academic" links under Degree Progress-> Graduation section
3
Repeated entries on Page Error generated when clicking on view advisement report. There is a error when users open this page and the popup error information is hard to read. Users have no idea about what the problem is and how to fix it. Some page titles are not coherent with the page If the "X" to close the window is accidentally clicked, a confirmation is offered. However, it suggests "Personalize Home Page Content" as the link to click if you wish to undo this later - which is not a link that's obvious First 6 links look like text, not links - particularly because links at the bottom of the list follow the convention for hyperlinks Self Service and other labels not necessarily self explanatory to users. Some of the buttons in the left bar are like text but links because they are not underlined. It is a natural mapping that people treat an underlined term as a hyperlink. In the left bar, some of the terms are underlined and some are not, but all of them are hyperlinks
Evaluator
E1
E2
E3
E4
Group
E3
4
4
4
4
4
E2
4
4
4
4
4
E4
4
4
4
4
4
E4
4
4
4
4
4
E1
3
4
4
4
4
E3
4
4
4
4
4
E2
3
4
3
4
4
E2
4
4
4
3
4
E3
4
4
4
4
4
E2
3
4
4
4
4
E1
2
3
3
2
3
E1
3
3
3
3
3
E1
2
1
3
3
3
E3
3
3
3
3
3
E3
3
3
3
3
3
10
1
Main Menu
2
1
Main Menu
4
1
Main Menu
6
6 7
Degree Progress/Graduation My Academics Requirement(1)
9
3
3
3
E4
1
2
3
3
3
E2
3
3
1
3
3
E1
4
4
3
3
3
2
1
3
3
3
Not clear what some expanded some unexpanded bars mean
E2
3
3
3
3
3
E3
2
2
3
3
3
E3
3
3
3
2
3
E3
3
4
3
2
3
E3
3
4
4
4
3
E4
2
3
2
4
3
E4
3
3
2
2
3
E3
2
2
3
2
2
E3
2
3
2
2
2
E1
2
1
1
2
2
E3
2
2
2
2
2
E3
2
1
3
2
2
E3
2
2
2
2
2
E3
2
2
2
2
2
E2
3
1
2
1
2
7
View academic requirement(1) V.2
2
8
View academic requirement(1) V.2
2
8
View academic requirement(1) V.2
2
10
Academic Records
4
Academic Records
3
1
Main Menu
2
1
Main Menu
8
7
Degree Progress/Graduation
8
7
View Degree Progress Report
8
17
Course Details
2
17
Course Details
8
25
2
E1
3
Create what-If Scenario My Academics
2
Units instead of "Credits"
My Academics Requirement(1)
21
E4
2
7
All
options are small, and not clear (not underlined) A little bit of description could be better. what is worklist?? should I use it to check my advising process?? First page is blank. The only thing there is the Left Navigation Bar. The user does not know where to go from there Confusing Database error message when first "My Academic Requirements" is clicked
4 7
2
The term "value" is ambiguous to users, so they can't figure out what does the value mean. Users have difficulties using the search function when they are trying to find an existing value, because people are not used to this kind of Boolean operators in the advanced search. The basic search should be set as the default search to fit users' experience with search engine. Given the fact that many terms are unclear to users especially those new users, the system should give some help or F.A.Q.s to help the users successfully use the system. Also, adding 1-2 sentences to describe the entries would be helpful. However, no such design is implemented. Repeated items could be confusing "View Unofficial transcript". I cannot go back after I click on "View unofficial transcript". The terms of the menus in the left bar are not clear to users. They should be as close as possible to the words users normally think of in conducting the task. The system only uses the left bar to show the options to users leaving much space unused, which can be used to facilitate users' needs. Icons aren't self explanatory. Example: "Student Center" is a person surrounded by the atomic symbol There is another part called "View What-If Report" but in this part, there are also some functions related to the What-If report. All the functions in this part should focus on the degree progress report and try to avoid irrelevant information to this part. Users use the term "credit" but the system use the term "unit" to express the same meaning. The information in "Enrollment Information" is also course detail, so it is unnecessary to separate them. Use two different terms "Create What-If Report" and "Create What-If Scenario" to mean the same thing. My program seems clickable but isn’t
11
All
View Unofficial Transcript
4
All
View Unofficial Transcript
6
All
2
18 25
Report Type is not clear... description required.
10
Self Service Create what-If Scenario Create what-If Scenario
4
4 4 8 8
8
To go back is confusing... one time they used cancel, and the another time they used return. Different ways and different places Under each button there is a description of what users can do by pressing the button. But the first two function descriptions are useless because they are the same as the texts on the button. And some others are unnecessary because the text of the buttons can tell users what they can do unambiguously. Under the term "View Degree Progress Report", the description is that "generate and view your degree progress report". This is not consistent because we can infer from the description that the term is not well designed to cover all the functions. Too much spacing between the heading and the subsequent text The style of the button "Return To Report Selection" is not consistent with that of the other buttons. While white space is good, the left weight of the page design is very unbalanced There is a large blank space in the right part of almost every page.
E4
2
2
3
2
2
E4
1
2
3
2
2
E3
2
2
2
2
2
E3
1
1
1
1
1
E2
1
1
1
0
1
E3
1
1
1
1
1
E1
1
0
1
0
1
E3
1
0
1
0
0
12
Examples of Usability Strengths System status is visible The system alerts users that actions is happening when there is a delay in response and keeps them aware of their location within the system. Example: The word "Processing" appears in the right corner of the screen when the system is working to retrieve information for the user. This alerts the user that the system is functioning while they wait for results of an action.
Navigation is stable throughout the site and uses a familiar hierarchy style Consistent navigation is available throughout the site and uses a familiar organization system so as to be familiar to users. Example: The same left-side navigation bar appears on every page.
Example: The navigation bar is organized in a manner similar to File Browsers in most operating systems. Categories or folders are on the left, and as you browse these groupings, the content in the middle changes. This example shows the navigation to the left and OSX to the right.
13
Examples of Areas for Improvement Labels are not used consistently Content is labeled inconsistently throughout the system. In some instances, a single label is used for multiple types of content. Example: The term "My Academics" is used twice under the same menu. The two different links lead to two very different portions of the site.
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Example: Page titles are not helpful to the user. Labels are applied that do not apply to the content on the page. In these two screenshots, the Self Service and Degree Progress/Navigation pages share the same “Base Navigation Page� title.
Navigation standards not always followed The visual design of links within menus is not consistent with one another, or with the convention of hyperlink appearance. Styling does not always indicate that the text link has a function. Example: Menu items in the navigation bar that appears on the left side of the page are inconsistently underlined. Some links are black, like the body text, and therefore do not appear to have a function.
15
Terms are not always ones a user would be familiar with The vocabulary used in the system is not necessarily compatible with that of the users. Example: The term "Units" is used within the system for the number of "credits" a course is worth. "Credits" is a term familiar to students, while "Units" is not.
Conclusion The heuristic evaluation gave our group a quick and easy way to evaluate the Wolverine Access System. In the process, we identified several serious usability issues as well as areas where the systems was very successful. All of our findings can help improve the current beta version of the system. The results of this heuristic evaluation will also be used in our later usability tests, such as the user survey.
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Appendix o o o
References Page ID# Key Personas & Scenarios
References [1] [2]
Information provided by client
http://www.admissions.umich.edu/fastfacts.html
[3]
http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/ http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/severityrating.html
[4]
Page ID #'s
The following Screenshots can be used to identify pages on which we have noted usability problems.
Page ID# 1: Wolverine Access Main Menu First 6 entries are not clear that they are clickable (not underlined), the whole list is small (see the exact size on the top left corner of the screen)
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Page ID# 2: Self Service Menu Screen
Page ID# 3: Degree Progress/Graduation Page Duplicated “My Academic Requirements” label
Page ID# 7: My Academic Requirements Page List of courses required
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Page ID# 13: Course Details Page with selection confirmation status
Page ID# 4: Douglas’s Student Center A view/link to most used student services
19
Page ID# 21: My Academics Tab from the Douglas’s Student Center “My Academics” Link
Page ID# 14: Apply for Graduation Page
Page ID# 15: Apply for Graduation Page After clicking on the program link
20
Page ID# 4: Apply for Graduation Page After selecting the graduate term from the drop down menu
Page ID# 17: Create What-if Report Page Creating a new report
21
Page ID# 5: Create What-if Report Page Continue the process
Page ID# 6: Checking Advisors Page
Page ID# 20: Evaluate My Transfer Credit Page
22
Page ID# 21: Viewing Transfer Credit Report Page
Page ID# 23: My Courses History Page Showing “show courses from My Planner” option is selected
Page ID# 25: View Unofficial Transcript Page With a selected “Academic Institution”
23
Page ID# 26: View Unofficial Transcript Page After “Academic Institution” Selection
Page ID# 27: Request Official Transcript Page With “Grad Post” option is selected from the option drop down menu
Page ID# 29: Request Enrolment Verification Page With sending via mail option is selected
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Page ID# 32: Confirmation page for the Request Enrolment Verification The mail option
Page ID# 30: Enrolment Verification Report Page The browser view option (users use it for instant printing)
Page ID #2: Academic Records Page Duplicated “Unofficial Transcript Labels�
Personas & Scenarios The following pages consists of the team members individually created personas. Some personas include scenarios for each user which helped inform our the team as to what tasks to test.
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Andrea McVittie SI 622 – Assignment #3 – Personas & Scenarios
Personas & Scenarios for Wolverine Access Interactive Advisement The Wolverine Access Interactive Advisement feature is going to be released for use by the University of Michigan community within the next six months. This will be a new feature in the Wolverine Access system and will be focused on allowing students to view their degree progress, quickly and easily see which requirements they have yet to fulfill, and determine which classes they may take in order to fulfill these requirements. This new feature will also eventually allow students to examine the impact on their academic advancement if they switch to a new major for their studies. The following personas were developed using a combination of facts taken from interviews conducted with potential users (see Appendix), found photos, and fictional ideas and are not intended to be an accurate representation of any one individual. Instead they portray a composite view of a few possible users.
Aaron Jennings “My Plan for the future? Well… I’m not really sure…” Aaron is an 19 year old freshman at the University of Michigan who came to U of M from Novi, MI. Before coming to U of M, Aaron lived with his parents, Julia and Tom Jennings and attended Novi High school. Aaron’s transition into college life has gone smoothly and he is enjoying life on campus. Due to the fact that they live nearby, Aaron’s parents visit often. Aaron is a decent student, but often puts off coursework during the weekends until Sunday. He finds it difficult to concentrate on homework when surrounded by all the possible social activities that spring up from living in the dorms. Instead of coursework, on Friday and Saturday nights Aaron often spends a lot of time playing Xbox and eating pizza with his roommate, Darnell – a sophomore - with whom he gets along quite well, and several of their friends from their floor. Aaron is currently enrolled as a psychology major, but he’s considering changing that, although he is undecided as to what he would like to change it to. He enjoyed the psychology class offered at his high school but is not sure it’s something he would enjoy pursuing as a career. He once noted to a friend, “I can’t see myself just listening to people’s problems all day.”
Aaron has had little success in finding a new academic path. While he doesn’t strive to be extremely wealthy, he’d like to have a comfortable life and be reasonably successful. His parents wanted him to attend college, as they did, but never pushed their son in any particular career direction. Aaron enjoys math and has also considered looking into the Civil Engineering program, but has made no effort to date to explore those avenues any further as he isn’t sure how to go about that. Aaron spends much of his time after classes at the local Jimmy John’s where he works making sandwiches for spending money. His parents and student loans have covered the majority of his school costs for him but this income allows him to spent more on entertainment. While the job at Jimmy John’s is often monotonous, Aaron finds the job fairly enjoyable as he gets to socialize with coworkers and students who come into the shop. He worked similar food service jobs in high school and finds the job an easy way to earn money. Aaron’s use of technology is fairly typical for someone his age. He owns a HewlettPackard laptop computer that he bought using money he received at his high school graduation party. He hasn’t upgraded to Vista and so far has not found any motivation to do so. He has been exposed to the new Microsoft Office, through a campus computer lab, and found it confusing to use. He’s not particularly technology minded, but does use the internet for a couple hours every day to read Facebook, watch YouTube, and download music. For school, he writes papers on his laptop and sometimes searches the library catalog (with minimal success) for electronic journals, so he can avoid going over to the library to retrieve physical journals and books. Aaron does own a few gadgets. He uses an iPod regularly while walking to classes or riding the bus. He uses text messaging on a regular basis and owns several console and hand held video game systems but has shown little interest in how they work, customization options, or other signs of being much of a “technophile”. Scenario Aaron spent the previous evening at Yost ice arena watching the hockey team lose to Michigan State. While this didn’t make for a very good evening, he did meet an interesting girl who was seated next to him. As the Zamboni machine ran, he introduced himself and learned her name was Laurie. Inevitabley, with all college conversations, they discussed majors. Laurie revealed that she was a chemistry major but was changing that to math. Excited to have something in common with Laurie, Aaron revealed that he wasn’t sure his major was the right fit for him either, and asked how she made the decision to change. Laurie then told Aaron about a new Wolverine Access tool which allowed a user to look at all their program requirements at once, and not only see how far along they are, but also what requirements they still need to fulfill,
and what courses they can take to do that. Viewing this information helped her make the decision that three and a half more years of chemistry isn’t what she wanted. After awakening at noon on Sunday after the hockey game, Aaron’s good mood about having gotten Laurie’s phone number is spoiled by the realization that he needs to read a stack of articles and write a paper for one of his psychology courses. He remembers the conversation from the previous evening and, eager to procrastinate just a bit more, decides to see what else he’ll need to finish this degree in psychology. He’s not willing to give up on it over one course, but would like to know what he’s facing. Aaron goes over to his desk and opens up his laptop. He points his browser to Wolverine Access and notes that it is a little different from the last time he used it. After logging in, he scans his options and selects “Self Service” which he thinks is what Laurie had told him to click on. Following this link he’s presented with a menu of options. He scans the categories until he finds “Degree Progress”. Under that, he clicks on a link entitled “My Academic Requirements”. Just as Laurie has told him, Aaron is presented with a full list of the requirements he needs to take. Scanning through the list is a bit intimidating for Aaron who feels the weight of four years of psychology pressing down on him. As this is his first semester, nearly every requirement menu is expanded and says “Unfulfilled” next to it. He browses through several of his general education requirements which don’t seem to bad and notes a couple classes even sound interesting. However, as Aaron comes to his psychology requirements he is less than thrilled. None of the course titles presented to him interest him very much. He clicks on a few of them and scans the descriptions before pressing the back button and returning to his requirements page. As Aaron is sitting staring blankly at the screen, Darnell returns from the bathroom and glances over Aaron’s shoulder. “Are you still worrying about psych? Request a ‘What If Report’ off that left menu. It’ll show you what happens to your credits if you change majors to Math. “ Darnell then guides Aaron through the ‘What If Report’ page. They select a Math Major for him and submit the report. A new page then informs him that an advisor from his selected possible new major will contact him with some information about how his current credits would transfer, along with other information related to this switch. Seeing an end in sight to his psychology days, Aaron feels re-energized to face his pile of homework that awaits. He’ll get started right after just one round of Halo on the Xbox.
Michelle Adams “I will achieve my goals, and make a difference!” Michelle is a single 27 year old African-American law student enrolled at the University of Michigan. She lives with her roommate Tom (a classmate), and Tom's cat Clementine. Their small, tidy apartment is in an old building near Kerry Town. She and Tom enjoy the location as it is near the Farmer’s market where they often shop on Saturdays. Before coming to Ann Arbor, Michelle lived in Madison Wisconsin. As an undergrad, Michelle attended the University of Wisconsin where she completed their Bachelor of Social Work program with a major in Social Welfare. Michelle’s family is from Milwaukee. Her parents both teach in public high schools and stressed the importance of education to all three of their children – Michelle, David (22) and Ella (18). Michelle is a second year student and involved in several community law projects that offer legal services designed to enhance the well-being of residents. She has been an active volunteer in groups such as Food Gatherers and Michigan Peaceworks. Upon completion of her degree and passing the bar exam, Michelle wants to pursue a position which will allow her to continue to be a community activist. She is currently exploring possible career paths which would take her to Minneapolis Minnesota where she has previously interned with some community groups that work with the refuge populations there. Michelle is very organized, and is careful to keep track of her busy calendar, as well as her academic progress. She carries a small personal planner with her daily, which she syncs with her computer calendar at night. Michelle is very comfortable using the web and other technologies. She has integrated many "Web 2.0" features into her life, including tagging through Del.icio.us. Michelle is a Macintosh user and carries her Macbook with her everywhere. Through her law school career she has developed excellent research skills using various databases. She does use the text messaging feature of her phone regularly to contact friends or touch base with her study groups but prefers to make time to call people in order to carry on a conversation.
Madhavi Chavali “Can you proofread my resume?” Madhavi is a junior enrolled in the University of Michigan as a business major. She is hoping to be accepted into the “Green Business” masters program at the University’s Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise after graduation. She is outgoing and social, and a hard working student. Madhavi lives with three roommates - Anne, Sarah, and Sara in a small house that they rent near downtown Ann Arbor. Madhavi is originally from Mumbai, but she and her parents moved to California when she was younger, in order for her father to take a job with the Union Bank of California. She is the oldest of four children. Her parents keep in regular contact with their daughter. Her mother visits often, and her father accompanies her when his job allows. In her free time, Madhavi is an avid reader and enjoys mysteries and biographies. She plays violin and is active in the student symphony orchestra. Madhavi is not currently working but intends to get an internship over the summer. The last several weeks she has been preparing her resume so that she can begin applying to openings throughout the country. She is particularly interested in working with companies pursuing solar energy technologies. Getting a great internship is a big cause of stress for her. Through her involvement in MPowered, she has been able to talk to many entrepreneurs who have told her that the experience they gained through their own internships was vital to their success. Madhavi owns a desktop Dell computer, but also has purchased a small IBM notebook that she takes with her to classes and the library. She uses the internet a few hours a day, where she posts to Facebook, reads friends blogs, and business news. Several gadgets get daily use in Madhavi’s life. She recently received an iPhone as a birthday gift from her parents. She also takes her pink iPod nano to the gym with her nightly, where she listens to music, recorded lectures, or podcasts of “The Environment Report” and “Marketplace” from Michigan Radio. Scenario Madhavi is preparing to apply for internships. She has selected several companies that she’s interested in working with but one in particular, Soltech, Inc. is offering a
dream position for two interns this year to shadow several high ranking members of the company in their daily jobs. The application process for this is extensive. The company not only wants to see a resume, and transcript copies, but also wants to interview the students about their academic progress. They would like to hear a detailed description on how the student plans to complete their degree, and which classes they believe they’ll be taking to do so. While Madhavi is an organized person, she hasn’t yet planned out all the classes she’ll be taking for senior year. Sara has told her that the new version of Wolverine access offers some tools for checking degree progress to see which requirements still need to be fulfilled, and that it gives a list of possible courses. Intent on being able to give a detailed description of her plans for senior year to the interviewers at Soltech, Madhavi sits down on the couch in their living room and logs into Wolverine Access from her laptop to examine this new tool and find the information she needs. She clicks on “Self Service” to access the student tools. From here she is given a list of options, grouped into categories. After browsing the category titles she selects “My Academic Requirements” hoping to be able to see which requirements she has and has not fulfilled. To Madhavi’s relief, a list of requirements for her degree program is then automatically generated for her. She scrolls down the page, easily seeing which requirements she has fulfilled, and which she has not. Requirements are listed with a small arrow next to them. Fulfilled requirements show just the title, status and arrow, while unfilled requirements have an expanded view. While browsing a fulfilled requirement, Madhavi discovers that clicking on the arrow causes the page to expand and hidden details to appear. Unfulfilled requirements automatically already have their information displayed including courses that would fulfill them. In the description of the course is a small icon in a column labeled status. Glancing at the top of this section she notes that this indicates whether she has taken a course, is in progress of taking that course, or has just planned on taking the course. Scrolling through the Academic Requirements page, Madhavi can quickly asses what requirements she has met, and which she needs to still complete before graduation. Due to the summer courses she has been taking since she arrived at school, she’s happy to discover that she will only be missing her management requirement by the time her senior year begins. Underneath the section on Management requirements, she sees a list of possible courses to fulfill this requirement, along with how many credits each course is, and when it is offered. According to the description she is still in need of 6 credits of management courses. After browsing the list of possible courses, she finds two course titles that interest her. One is a course on “Managing Your Own Small Business or Startup” while the other is a special topics course on “The Challenges of Management in the New Technology sector. She notes from the description that one is offered in the fall,
while the second is offered in the Winter term, so she does not need to worry about the two conflicting with one another. She right clicks on each linked class title, opening it in another window. These links take her into the course catalog where she can read a detailed description of each course to make sure it’s a topic she wants to pursue. She closes the Academic Requirements window she had open, leaving Wolverine Access’ Interactive Advisement section. If the courses turn out to be of interest, she’ll be able to start writing out her senior year plan so that she can eagerly discuss it with the Soltech interviewers.
Assignment 3
Mohammad Hadhrawi Section 1 Group 5
PART I: PERSONAS Name: Sara S. McCartney Age: 21 Status: Engaged Level: Fourth year student (Senior) College: Ross School of Business Major: Accounting
Background: Sara is a 21 years old student who lived most of her life with her family in Travelocity, Northern Michigan. She used to play with her friends all the time in the park, when she was little. She enjoys being with her friends, and like to eat with them. She has moved to Ann Arbor after she received her acceptance in the Business school. Sara has lived in the university dorms for three years. Right now, she lives off-campus with her fiancÊ. Work: Sara used to work part time in several places. She worked as a waiter Pizza House. Also, she worked in the Shapiro library to help patrons. A day in Sara’s life: She wake up in the morning and have a breakfast. Then, she attends a class and work on a project with her team. She may run and take a bath before she gets to the bed. Interests: Sara likes skydiving, scuba diving and running. Also, she likes to be productive. Goals: Her plans are to work as an accountant in Ernst and Young, Detroit. After 3 years in that company, she plans to get a master degree in accounting to apply for the CPA. Technology owned and used: Sara has a HP laptop. She is using it daily, and connects to the internet 3 hours per day. She uses the Wolverine system twice per semester. And that is to register for her classes, pay tuition and print transcripts. She never checked all the wolverine features. Besides, she finds that the system interface is ugly and not attractive at all.
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Assignment 3
Mohammad Hadhrawi Section 1 Group 5 Name: John M. Null Age: 26 Status: Single Level: Graduate Student College: School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Major: Computer Science
Background: John is a 26 years international student who was born and lived in Madrid, Spain. He considers him self as a computer geek and spend most of his time on Facebook. He lives with a dog in an apartment near the north campus. Work: John worked previously as a GSRA in the computer science department. Also, he worked before for a couple of months in an IT company in his country before he came to the USA. A day in John’s life: He wake up in the morning and have a cop of tea. Then, check his e-mails and the Blog to see if he has additional tasks to do for the day. After that, he takes his dog for a walk before going to the class. After he is done from the day, he prepare a light meal for him self before going to the bed. Interests: John likes programming and mobile robotics. He did a lot of researches in that field. He likes to cook and prepare foods. Besides, he likes to spend most of his time on the Internet. Goals: He plans to work with Microsoft in the software development department. Technology owned and used: John owns Dell laptop. He is using it daily, and he is always online. He uses the Wolverine system more than once in the semester. He uses the system to register for his classes, check the grades and pay tuition. He thinks that the system could perform better if it could exports its data to external software, such as Microsoft finance and iCal. Besides, he thinks that the academic advisement feature would not be useful, since he is barely see his advisor.
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Assignment 3
Mohammad Hadhrawi Section 1 Group 5 Name: Emily L. Ryman Age: 19 Status: Single Level: First year student (Freshman) College: School of Science Major: Psychology
Background: Emily is a 19 years old freshman student in the science school. She is from Detroit, and lives in the university dorms. She is a funny person and enjoys hanging out with her friends especially for eating. Work: Emily used to work as camp counselor for children before joining the university. Right now she is not taking any part time job, and spend most of her time to study and with her friends. A day in Emily’s life: Wake up in the morning and go to class. Take a nap when she comes back. Hang out with her friends, and have some food with them. Interests: Emily likes sports especially ice-skating. She likes to be surrounded with friends and eat with them. Also, she likes to read fashion magazines, and watch movies especially romantic stories. Goals: She plans to get married before graduation. Then, she would like to be a counselor and work with children more specifically. Technology owned and used: Emily has a HP laptop. She is using her laptop daily for an hour or two. She uses the Wolverine system to check for her grades, see the schedule and register for classes. She just accesses the system twice per semester. Also, she is comfortable with the system and find it easy to use, although it does look nice. In addition, she thinks that it needs more colors, and it would be better if it becomes compatible with the blackberry.
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Assignment 3
Mohammad Hadhrawi Section 1 Group 5
PART II: SCENARIOS
John M. Null Before Accessing: It is the end of the semester, and John wants to access the Wolverine system to search for classes, and register for the new term. First, he go to the Wolverine access website, and log in to his account. Then, he click the student services to go to the student page. Inside the System: In this page, John clicks the backpack to check for the courses. Then, he fiend the courses he would like to register for the next semester. Next, he selects these courses and adds them to his backpack. Now, John is ready for the next semester except the fact that he has to wait for the enrolment date, to register officially for the courses. After John is done with the pre registration, he wants to make sure that these courses are appropriate for that semester. So, he clicks the advisor link, and checks his current advisor. That is, he wants to talk with the advisor to help him finalizing his schedule for the next semester. So, he wrote down his advisor name to talk with him later in his office. Before John leaves the website, he has clicked the “order official transcript” link. He remembered that he wants couple of copies of his transcript to apply for internship. He wants to be ready, for the internship fair event. Finally, and before he leave the website, he has checked his bills (financial, tuition) and noted down the due date. He added a reminder in his electronic calendar, so that he doesn’t pass the due date. After Completion: Now, John is ready to log out his account, and wait for the enrolment date to complete the registration. When that day is up, he will access the system again, and will go to the backpack registration page, submit his preferences/selection, and wait for the confirmation.
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Assignment 3
Mohammad Hadhrawi Section 1 Group 5
Emily L. Ryman Before Accessing: It is the time of the semester where Emily is almost done with her finals and about to register for the new term classes. So, she opened her HP laptop, while she was sitting in a coffee shop and connected to the university wireless network. Then she logged on to the Wolverine website using her unique name and password. Inside the System: In the student business page, Emily used to browse by School/College link in Class Search to find the psychology classes. Then, she added the classes for the next term to her backpack list. That is, based on her requirements and the time that the classes are offered. Then, she put a reminder for the appointment date of registration. The morning of Emily’s appointment, she logged in to the system and checked the class status and they were still open. After that, when she got her reminder, she logged into the system and registered for the classes. When Emily’s bills had run, she printed out her bill and sent it to her family who lives in Detroit. That is, she used the “view bill” link to access her financial information. Then, she selected the printing feature in that page and got a copy of her bill statement. Emily is a new student in the university, and unfortunately she doesn’t use the system for any other purposes. In addition, she did not notice all the features that are available to her as a student who could access the Wolverine system. So, her uses for the system is limited to previewing grades, registering for classes and follow up with her bills. After Completion: Now, Emily is done with the registration process and about to close her laptop. After that, she is going to have lunch with her friends and enjoy her day, and then go back to her room and continues studying for the finals.
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SI 622 Assignment-3: Personas and scenarios Wolverine Access Student Center – Interactive Advisement 31 Jaunary, 2008 Ning Wang UMID: 01335080 Session: Thursday Group-5 Members: Andrea Mcvittie Kumud Bihani Mohammad hadhrawi Ning Wang What’s in this report: Description – P1 Personas – P2~P4 Scenario – P5~P6 Appendix 1~11 - P7~P28 (11 interviews)
About the project: Wolverine Access is a gateway for all the administrative systems at the University of Michigan. The Student Center is a section within Wolverine Access, used by students to register for classes, track degree progress, access transcripts, pay tuition, and conduct various other business transactions. The new version of the software tightly integrates students’ degree requirements with the Registration process. A new, interactive tool will allow students to view their degree requirements and help them to more easily find classes to meet their requirements.
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Persona - 1
Lei Nie PhD student in Mechanical Engineering University of Michigan Ann Arbor, School of Engineering Background 24-year old, male Single, no children Comes from Shanxi Province, China P.R Lived in Beijing for the last 6 years for his undergraduate and master’s degree in a top university in China in Mechanical Engineering Lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan Has 8-month industry experience in a life instrumentation company in Beijing in 2006 Researching on the robotics-related field Dedicated to his research very much He does not interact with his friends very often because he’d love to focus on his current research Loves sports very much especially basketball and running. Participated in the Beijing International Marathon competition two times. Loves his country very much. Would like to come back and become a professor in his field in the future to contribute to his country. Key Attributes Enthusiastic in robotics and in research Works hard all the time Independent Serious and demanding with the research Easy-going
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Personal Profile With the dream of becoming one of the top researchers in the world in robotics field, Lei came to University of Michigan to pursue his doctor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. What attracting him most is the mobile robot project. He had been doing research for several years and Michigan is one of the top universities in this field, so he came here. It does not take him much time to get along with new environment, because to him, the most important thing is the research. So he dedicates himself in the project here. He works really hard. The professor who is his academic advisor likes him very much and often assigns him challenging tasks. He always successfully manage them. In his limited leisure time, he’d like to go to NCRB to play basketball with his friends, which makes him refreshed. In the last 6 years, Lei always use the THU university system to register for courses, view grade, and print the unofficial transcript and so on. Although it is not good enough, he is used to that. So it took him little time to do what he wants in the previous system. After arriving Ann Arbor, he had to face the new system - Wolverine Access to register courses, view his grades. At the same time, he like the design that he can view his due bills and pay the bill online through eCheck using the Wolverine Access. He is pleased about that. Actually, there are many functions besides these three functions. He finds that the main page is designed not so user-friendly and even somewhat ugly. There is no easy way to navigate the whole system, which stops him exploring the other functions of the system because he doesn’t want to waste his time to work those things out. In the meantime, he thinks the current system is already good enough to meet his needs. He doesn’t care other functions very much. He thinks integrating too many functions in this system may be overwhelming for people to figure out how to use it. He talks with his advisor at least once a week to discuss his academic path and his research. But he didn’t notice that there is a function in the Wolverine Access system called my advisor. He is not expecting that the interactive advisement function that will be integrated into the new version of system would do any help, because face-to-face communication is the most effective way of advising for him.
Persona - 2
Personal profile “I’m a geek”, Greg always describe himself as this. His interests are in computer such as programming, web 2.0, digital games. But now, he is also interested in interface and interaction design which can better connect people and technology to make the technology function well. Greg works five days a week. He has to spend eight to ten hours working in the weekday. Greg was actually familiar with Wolverine Access before he was a student of the University because he works as a developer in Michigan Administrative and Information Services. His work involved the development of the system. But the time he really used it is when he entered SI. He know
Greg Brown Master Student in Human-Computer Interaction University of Michigan Ann Arbor, School of Information Background 31-year old, male Married to Sarah, one kid: Steve 3-year old Comes from West Michigan, Lived in Ann Arbor for 12 years Probably count as a second year student, but she has been going to SI since fall 2004, and just over half-way point Works as a developer in Michigan Administrative and Information Services, specifically in the area that support the PeopleSoft system for Academic Advising, Student records, and curriculum. Expert in computer skills. Has Linux experience. Work primarily at office but sometimes at home. She didn’t take many courses one semester because of his full time job, but he has to make sure that his score is at least B to get his tuition paid by his boss. He likes competitive sports such as tennis. He plays in a tennis league. Believes strongly in civil liberties, especially concerning personal privacy and free speech
exactly each function in the Wolverine Access, but for his own, he only use Student Business to search for classes, view registration appointment, register for classes, view grades, and get transcripts. He views his bills and pays tuition through the e-check feature. He also uses Employee Business to enter any sick or vacation days that he takes and to view his paychecks. For many functions, although he knows what they are and he is responsible for developing some of them, he does not use them in the past. For example, in the academic record, he only use view grade function. As a developer in Wolverine Access now, he is responsible for keeping the registration system working, which also means that he spends time solving problems with the course catalog, transcripts, advising reports, and other student-related business. He also lead projects to do new features in the system, such as photo class rosters, implementing enforced prerequisites, creating a way to find students who are taking classes out of sequence or repeating classes to make sure they don’t get credit, and currently he is working on an online teaching evaluation system. In other words, his first priority is to keep the system up and running, and his second priority is to design and implement new functionality based on user requests and needs. He likes the idea of interactive advisement for which he is responsible for but he also knows that it is really hard to implement because the school is really big has nearly 20 different schools, each of which has different specific requirements. To meet all of these requirements, his team has to work closely with different departments to work that out.
Key attributes Organized Focused and dedicated to his work Value team work highly and like to interact with other people To him, the system is very secure and reliable and he can do his stuff here without worries about secure issues. Creative
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Persona - 3
Tiffany Nielsen Freshman, major in Ergonomics Background 18-year old, female Single and has no kids Used to live Detroit with her family, but now she has to move to Ann Arbor to live independently Just finished her college in Detroit University experience is different from that of her college and she finds that everyone is working hard There is much homework for her which she found is a bad part of the school Like Ann Arbor very much because it has a lot of trees and lawns, and the fresh air here is really enjoyable Her dream is to “ Find her self married working in a law firm as a corporate attorney” Loves to hang out with her friends. Goes out dinner with friends often Driving is another hobby of her Key Attribute Always want to be different in something Funny and an ourdoor person Impatient, irritable at times Not organized Risk-like person, likes to try new and different things
Personal profile To Tiffany, university is a totally new experience. She has been looking forward to it when she was in the college. In her view, life in university means living independently, because he has been living with her parents all her life. At the same time, in the university, she can meet people not only all over the country but also all over the world, which is amazing to her. University of Michigan was her dream in her college and she realized that dream by a good SAT score. All of her family members are proud of that and she was, too. Although she likes to go out dinner or have fun with friends, she finds that she has to spend a large amount of her time dealing with the homework. At the beginning, she was not used to that. However, by and by, she comes to like this kind of busy life because she thinks that “everyday, I find something new, something that is interesting”. She learned a lot in this process and become a top student in her department. And she made some good friends both in and outside her department. Studying here, all the things are pretty new to her and she likes to explore them one by one. The Wolverine Access is one of them. In her college, although there is online system to facilitate the instruction and study, it is not so complicated like this. She found that she can do a lot of things here such as registering courses, paying tuition, view scores and change profiles. First of all, she has to learn how to register courses in the beginning of the term. There are some workshops offering by her department and library to help student learn how to use online tools such as Wolverine Access and Ctools. She went to one of them and learned some of the skills needed. But she also forgot some of them because she didn’t use them very often. At the beginning of the semester, she was curious about the system, so she tried to use many functions but after a while, there is no longer interest of her to do this. As a result, except for the basic functions which she has to use a lot such as pay bills, register courses, he never use other functions nor remember what they are. But she is satisfied with the current system. The only thing she finds unsatisfied is that the system is “not Blackberry compatible”.
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Scenario – 1 Greg Greg has been an employee of UM for about 12 years. He is responsible for the developing of the online application for UM students. However, he never imagines that one day he is one of the real users. In 2004, he decided to apply for the master’s degree in School of Information, University of Michigan. He really likes the Human-Computer Interaction specialization. He would like to apply what he has learned in SI to the development of the new system in UM so that the students can be better served. At the beginning of that semester, he got his first chance to use the system as a real user. (Previously, he did some testing work for the system using test ID. He was excited and couldn’t wait to use it. He used his unique name and Kerberos password to login to the system and go to the Enrollment part. Because he had to decide what classes to take in the first semester, he spent a lot of time going back and forth between the SI website and the Wolverine Access. He found that the search function is a bad design especially when someone has the needs like his. When he was trying to go through all the possible courses for the semester, it really took him huge amount of time because he had to go back and forth all the time and the backspace is not allowed here. Almost 2 hours later, he got all courses he wanted to take in his backpack and logged out because he was kind of tired of that. He used the finance part every month to pay the bills. He likes this part very much because it saved him a lot of time and effort. Also, based on his own experience and knowledge, it is really secure to use the system. “The eCheck is really cool” he said that. What he wants is to design more applications like eCheck. Not until the end of the semester did he used the functions of “grades” and “unofficial transcript” because he had to check his scores and make sure that there is no score under B. If he got a score under B, he would be no longer qualified for “tuition reimbursement” from his current work. So constantly, he would login in the Wolverine Access system to check his score in the “view score”. Fortunately, he passed all of the courses and then he had to submit his transcript to his boss to show his qualification to get the tuition reimbursement. So right after all the scores of the first semester are posted, he login to the system again. This is the first time he used the transcript function. He first tried to view his unofficial transcript, and then he went directly to order his transcript. In this page, there are some instructions on how to order, the charge of this service and the time of processing. He found that he had to wait two weeks to process his transcript because most schools can only process the transcript two weeks after the last day of the term. He was disappointed about that. Two weeks later, He went again to the transcript part and directly clicked the order button. The next page required him to give specific information to process his transcript. He input all the information needed and checked again to make sure all the inputs are correct. Then he submitted. It took two days to process and after that, he can pick it up at the MSA building because he chose the option to pick it up himself. He realized that he also can use the mail function. But he was afraid it would take more days. From 2007, he was assigned to work on the academic advisement system in Wolverine Access. He is both excited and a little worried about that. He is excited because he has many design ideas based on his own experiences of Academic Advisement that can be used in the future development. At the same time, there are many challenges in front of him: for example, there are 19 schools in the university and within each school, there are many different programs with totally different requirements. “It takes a lot of manual work to enter in the requirements” because the developer has to work with people from these different departments to “understand the requirements and figure out how to enter them into the system”. But he believes that the system will become better and better by the effort of his team.
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Scenario – 2 Tiffany Tiffany has just arrived Ann Arbor for four days and she finds everything is new to her. One of another student in her department told her that there is a series of workshops in undergraduate library which is about how to use online applications of University of Michigan. The topic covers Ctools, UM web mail, Wolverine Access, Mfile, Mprint and so on. Her friend decides to go there today because she wants to learn how to use Wolverine Access. She also tells Tiffany that Wolverine Access is extremely important to students because you can do many important things there. Although one of her friends who was one year older than her in UM taught her some basic functions in Wolverine Access when she was choosing her courses, those are all about course registration. She has learned how to search courses, how to use backpack and how to register. However, this is far from enough to know. So she decides to go with her friend. It does not take them much time to get there because both of them have had a guide tour around the campus. They come to the four floor of the library and find the room for the workshop. There are some handouts for them which they can keep for future reference. Workshop begins, the instructor begin with stressing what is Wolverine Access and why it is so important to all the students. Tiffany ignores those points and goes directly to the webpage for Wolverine Access and login use her unique name and Kerberos password. She goes to student business. There are so many links in front of her now. She realizes that she only used the upper left part of the Wolverine Access which is “Enrollment”. And for this part she only used some of them. She is familiar with the Backpack/Registration function. She clicks this button and found there is only one semester which is fall 2007. She continue clicking, in current page she can search for courses and view her courses this semester. She knows that she still can select and drop courses now until 3 weeks after class begins. She spends some time thinking about the courses and happen to realize that the instruction has began. So she stops browsing herself and goes back to the workshop. Again, she is led by the instructor go through all the functions in the Enrollment part. She finds that it is really good that she can select the courses she like to take which is impossible in her college. After that part, she is taught how to use the Academic Record part. There are seven links under Academic Record. First one is used to view the advisor. There is no advisor for her, but she doesn’t know why because she doesn’t know exactly her advisor. Next one is the view grades, she clicks and no result for her. The reason is obvious. Then the next two are about the unofficial transcript: the first one is used to view it and the other is to order one. She is told that she can proceed to order her unofficial transcript online for the use of applying for internships or jobs. She doesn’t go through these two functions, instead, she looks at the screen to see what she can do in the future. She thinks the instruction is helpful because without that, she won’t know what these functions are used for because there is no record for her in the database. Then she clicks the “View Degree Progress Report” and it takes her a few seconds to see her academic requirement. There are lots of data. Also she sees the option that she can get a PDF file of the report but she thinks it is not useful for her for the time being. So she chooses to go back and try the other two functions in this category which are “Apply for Graduation” and “View Committee Information”. The first one seems far away, so she didn’t goes into it because she is afraid that she may made a mistake by clicking on “Apply for Graduation”. She just listens to the instruction and gets some ideas about that. She will use that function four years later anyway. When she goes to the last part, the title of which is confusing to her, she finds nothing in there. The instructor tells her that this is for PhD student and she can ignore that. This is a part that is related closely to her in the future. She thinks that this is very important tool for her to keep on track in his undergraduate study. Although most of the functions are not available for her for the time being, it is never right to ignore them. Except that, what she remembers the most clearly are the functions of “grade”, “transcript” and “degree requirement”. Those are all that Academic record means to her. After that, she continues to go through all the functions led by the instructor and she really likes the idea of managing her finance online.
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Kumud Bihani
Somehow, we must find again our sense of individual values, lost in this century of enormous technological advance. This very freedom that mechanical aids are giving us has welded us into unmanageable megalopolises, where people are anonymous numbers and where communication with our fellow man seems a minus quantity. We must restore the warmth and spirit we had in the smaller community. I hope that in our leisure time we will once again know our neighbor — and, if everyone knows his neighbor and learns to live with him, the entire world will be at peace. —Henry Dreyfuss, Designing for People [Dreyfuss 1955, p. 261]
Understanding the user is the first step in the ongoing process of creating a good system. A persona is a representation of the user, and it helps understand him and how he reacts to the system. The term ‘user’ is very broadly used, and represents millions of people who might use your system. Creating personas helps narrow down on the specific needs, desires and behavior of the people using the system. A scenario tells a story of how the user interacts with the system. It describes how to do things, and is a good starting point in order to analyze a system. In the paper below, I have developed 3 personas, each having some characteristics of the several users of the Student Advisement System on WolverineAccess. I then created 2 scenarios using these personas. The scenarios describe how the users interact with the system.
Personas
Diya Ramesh MSI, School of Information University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Profile Diya is an International graduate student at the School of information. She has been using the wolverine access system regularly since she joined graduate school. Background Age : 25 Major : Human Computer Interaction Semester : 4th Hometown: Colombo, Sri Lanka Marital status: Engaged Hobbies: Reading, cooking, collecting Teddy Bears Work: Part Time at the Library Reference desk Computer Usage Ownership: Dell Inspiron Hours of use: 8-10 hours/day Primary Use : Email, Assignments, Voice chat
System Usage View advisors : No View grades : Yes View unofficial transcript : Yes Order transcript : No View degree progress report : Yes Apply for graduation : No Course Registration : Yes View Paycheck : Yes
She lives at Northwood with 2 roommates. Diya is an outgoing girl, and loves to make friends. A typical day in her life includes going to class, cooking, and doing assignments. On weekends, Diya enjoys going for a quiet dinner with her friends, or goes for a movie. She has always been ranked amongst the top 10% of her class. Diya is in her last semester, and has taken all the courses that will help her fulfill the degree requirements. She did so with advice from her faculty advisor, as well as by using the degree progress report online. Diya uses the wolverine access system regularly to access her paychecks, as well as get to other financial information. She is a member of ASHA, Ann Arbor, a nonprofit organization, as well as many other clubs at the University. She is currently seeking a full time job at a software firm.
Diya wants to Be able to access the wolverineaccess system from CTools Get a more detailed description of the degree progress report, which was not very accurate in her case Have a better interface for the system Interact with advisors, live, through the system Get grades emailed directly to her at the end of the semester
Harvey David Master of Science, EECS University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Profile
Background Age : 35 Major : Computer Science Semester : 2nd Hometown: Los Angeles, CA Marital status: Married Hobbies: Programming, Latest electronic gadgets, Playing video games Work : Works Part Time at the Michigan Administrative & Information Services, to maintain the current wolverine access system Computer Usage Ownership: MacBook Pro, with both Leopard and Windows XP Hours of use: Computer is always on, even when he’s sleeping Primary Use : Work, Email, Class Assignments
System Usage View advisors : No View grades : Yes View unofficial transcript : Yes Order transcript : Yes View degree progress report : No Apply for graduation : Yes Course Registration : Yes View Paycheck : Yes
Harvey is pursuing MS in Computer Science. He did his undergraduate degree from University of Michigan, and then worked as a developer at Sun Microsystems. He currently works part time at the Michigan Administrative and Information Services Department, which is responsible for maintaining the WolverineAccess system. He knows several programming languages like Java, COBOL, etc. Harvey is a computer geek. He spends his entire day on the computer, sometimes even forgetting to eat and sleep. He has been married for 2 years, and has a 6 month old daughter. Harvey wishes to graduate and then start up his software firm. He is currently seeking admission into the business school for a dual degree program. Managing work, family and school keeps him very busy. Harvey usually sticks to a very strict schedule. He plans out intricate details, such as spending 10 mins at the coffee shop before class. He believes that good time management is the key to leading a successful life.
Harvey wants to Integrate the system with Ical, Google Calendar, or other planners, that automatically exports class times Integrate the system with Mschedule, so that it becomes easier to plan classes Be shown the option of all the classes he can take to satisfy a requirement Maintain the reliability and security of the system Get more people interested in the working of the system
Elaine John Freshman, LS&A University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Profile
Background Age : 18 Major : Undecided Hometown: Ann Arbor, MI Marital status: Single Hobbies: Reading fashion magazines, Shopping, Hanging out with friends, Driving Work: Part Time as a waitress
Computer Usage Ownership: HP Laptop Hours of use: 4-5 hours/day Primary Use : Check mail, surf fashion sites, Facebook Log on to wolverine access : Only to register for courses
System Usage View advisors : Yes View grades : No View unofficial transcript : No Order transcript : No View degree progress report : No Apply for graduation : No Course Registration : Yes View Paycheck : No
Elaine is a freshman at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She moved in with her friends after High School. She drives a Mini Cooper, which was gifted to her by her parents on her 17th birthday. Elaine likes to be surrounded by her friends. She has an irritable nature, and gets angry very easily. However, she enjoys playing with little children, and wants to work at a day care center. Elaine has always been interested in Architecture, and wants to take it up as a major in college. However, she has not yet registered for any classes that will fulfill this requirement. She meets with her advisor often, because she thinks he is very good looking, and also to get advise on scheduling classes, and deciding her major. She wants to take the same classes as her friends.
Elaine wants The WolverineAccess system to be compatible with the back button of the browser Drop Down menus to make course selection easier Easier navigation through the system Compatibility with Blackberry The system to be accessible at all times
Scenario – 1 Diya is at the end of her 3rd semester. She has to register for 12 credits in order to graduate after her 4th semester. She checks all the degree requirements on her TAPS Sheet, and discovers that she has not completed the Statistics Requirement. Diya also checks with her academic advisor about the classes she needs to take in order to graduate. She has a detailed discussion with her advisor about what classes she should register for. Diya now has to decide on which Statistics course she will take in order to fulfill the requirement. She visits the academic advisement system in order to check for available Statistics classes. The academic advisement system of the new WolverineAccess shows her what Statistics classes she qualifies for. She browses through websites of several other departments and compiles a list of Statistics Courses available. She then takes this list to her advisor, who points out 3 courses out of the list which are relevant to her degree. Diya decides on her other classes, and registers for those first. She then checks the schedule, and finds that there are 2 of the 3 Statistics classes that fit in with her schedule. She registers for both of them, planning on attending both before deciding which one to settle for.
Scenario – 2 Harvey works at the Michigan Administrative and Information Services Department. In order to maintain his student status as well as hold on to his job, Harvey needs to maintain good grades. He needs to turn in his official transcript to his supervisor, who monitors his work as well as his academic progress. Towards the end of the semester, Harvey decides to plan the courses he will be taking for the next semester. Since he has access to the new wolverineaccess system, he decides to test it out. With the permission of his supervisor, he inputs his own details into the system. He then uses the academic advisement tool in the new system to check what classes he still needs to take, and adds them to his planner. When the registration date approaches, Harvey looks up the courses he has decided on taking, and registers for those courses. Since registration dates are very close to the end of the semester, Harvey has exams. Also, there are several students trying to access the system at once, which often lead to technical glitches and crashes. So he is very busy towards the end of the semester. Once registration is done and the semester comes to an end, Harvey uses the view grades function to check his grades, and then uses the apply for transcript function in order to give the official transcript copy to his supervisor.