Development of an IA Scheme for iSchool’s “Current Students” Portal
This is a project to redesign the information architecture of the UofT iSchool current student portal with the method of Affinity Diagram.
Team Members: Francesca Weigensberg | Aaron Yin | Phillipps Xue
My Roles: Prototyping, Documenting
Methods: Affinity Diagram, Rapid Prototype
What I learned: Information Architecture, Conceptual Model, Mental Model
Context:
The purpose of the iSchool’s portal for current students is to provide relevant information and services to students currently enrolled in various iSchool degree and diploma programs. Some of these focus on academic information (i.e., Timetables, course listings, important dates, etc.), while others focus on student services (i.e., The Inforum, MISC and MUSSA, career services, etc.). The various navigation systems, described below, will help to explain our choices in designing the rapid prototype. Overall, the rapid prototype was designed in a way that the current student’s needs will be fully satisfied.
Method:
Before we began redesigning the information architecture for the iSchool’s current students’ portal, we brainstormed many ideas of what we felt was important for the portal by creating an affinity diagram, similar to the small exercise that we did in class using the post-it notes on the wall. We then went back to the website the iSchool currently uses as its portal to see if our headings and categories matched or were similar. In addition, we also conducted research and analysis on other iSchool websites to make comparison and see what works or does not work for them, and revised our diagram.
After finalizing our diagram on paper, we used Axure 8.0 to develope our rapid prototypes and developed a global header and footer, local navigations for each header label, as well as some shortcut links for a prospective home page, based on what we perceived to be popular reasons for using a portal in the first place, as well as timely announcements, reminders and events that students may have needed reminders for.
Conceptual Model:
Because many students are already familiar with the current portal, we did not want to change the design of the portal too much. Aimed to build up a conceptual model to match iSchool’s current students’ mental model, the iSchool logo at the upper left corner of the global header are intended to leverage the gestalt law of isomorphism to enact current students’ past experience with iSchool. Meanwhile, we suppose that the eight header labels covering programs, finances, faculty, research, careers, and services managed to form a sense of what the iSchool comprises as a whole among students. (Please check this Axure Share link for reference)
Intended Pathways:
Global Header:
- U of T iSchool Logo → This will direct users to the homepage of iSchool.
- U of T Home → This will take users to the University of Toronto’s homepage.
- Acorn → This will take students to Acorn directly.
- Blackboard → This will take students to Blackboard directly.
- Login → This will take users to login page of University of Toronto directly.
- Search bar → This will help improve functionality of the portal, and will help students find resources and information more easily. We hope it will help to ease some cognitive burdens.
- The following will lead to local navigation: About, Programs of Study, Finances, News & Events, Research & Faculty, Services, Careers & Networking, Contacts
Home Page:
- Rolling Images
- Internal Events
- Public Events
- Announcements
- Newsletters
- Affiliated Institutions
Global Footer:
- Copyright and address of the iSchool
- Quick links to commonly used resources, based on a mental model we came up with: Courses, Timetables, Degree Requirements
- Social media links for the iSchool: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
- A sitemap
- A directory in alphabetical order
Local Navigation:
- About: Policies, About the iSchool, Past Agendas & Minutes)
- Programs of Study: Degree Requirements, Diploma (DAIS), Courses, Timetables, Calendar, Academic Regulations, Graduation
- Finances: Tuition, Financial Aid, Work-Study Program, Grants & Bursaries
- Research & Faculty: Faculty Profiles, Published Research, Research Funding
- Services: Inforum, IT Support, Administrative Services, MISC, MUSSA
- Careers & Networking: Career Services, Job Listing, Job Shadowing, Employment Statistics, Alumni
- Contacts: Faculty, Staff, Ph.D. Students, Affiliated Institutes, Student Councils, Media Contact, Donations & Promotions
Justifications:
We adapted the topical organization schemes when dealing with choices of organization. In the process of developing the global navigation and local navigation, we tried to be compliant with the golden rules of collectively exhaustiveness and mutually exclusiveness as much as possible.
As stated above, the eight major labels of the global navigation are About, Programs of Study, Finances, News & Events, Research & Faculty, Services, Careers & Networking, Contacts. Compared with the existing IA scheme, we combined the “Job shadowing” and “Careers” into a new section called “Careers & Networking”, as the original two labels both dealt with same issues on finding jobs, networking, and career development; we differentiated financial information with “Programs of Studies” by a new tab “Finances” instead of merging them together; “Research” are changed to “Research & Faculty” as we considered a single “Research” was vague and the word “Faculty” would be effective in forming a conceptual model of a school’s website; and we renamed “Notices” to “News & Events” since notices didn’t seem to cover the events subpages. As a result, we renamed the labels of the global navigation in the way that it will be more easier for visitors to comprehend.
As for the global navigation, the organization of each section is justified and discussed in the following:
The “About” tab is important for current students to familiarize themselves with the iSchool’s policies, as well as the ongoing faculty meetings. It will also prepare potential students to attend these meetings, especially those regarding programing changes. This also ensures transparency which is key for academic institutions. By reading through the policies and other information about the iSchool, students can also have a better understanding about their faculty and the people within it.
The “Programs of Study” is geared to be very similar to what is currently in use. Some of the resources from this tab are also available in the global footer for easy access, as stated previously.
The “Finances” includes information on how they can afford to attend the school. “Tuition” will be updated yearly, and will differ for domestic and international students, and will provide resources to help students pay for the program and complete registration requirements. However, the label “Financial Aid” and “Grants & Bursaries” may cause some difficulty of ambivalence. We suppose “Financial Aid” refers to loans while “Grants & Bursaries” are more academical.
“News & Events” includes all newsletters for both Master and Ph.D. students as well as categorizing various events based on their target audience.
“Research & Faculty” allows internal research be more accessible to the public. It also lets students see which faculty and their research matches students’ interest, which is crucial for finding a thesis supervisor and a partner for reading courses. We also know that lack of funds can act as a barrier to research projects, which is why we kept a “Research Funding” link.
“Services” provides information about various services the iSchool offers. While “MISC” and “MUSSA” may not seem professional in nature, they do provide a service to students in terms of advocacy and social interaction. Students would also find “IT Support” necessary, as they may encounter so many networking and computer problems that need to be resolved.
“Careers & Networking” focuses on connecting students with potential career and networking opportunities. We know that job shadowing is just one of many ways for students to network, and allow for alumni as a way to give back to their alma mater. This is a reason we kept the “Alumni” link. We also know that posting past “Employment Statistics” of alumni can be helpful for current students who might have concern about the post-graduation employment.
Lastly, we kept the “Contacts” tab because people might have issue finding the appropriate contact on search engine. We initially debated removing links for the media and prospective donors, but we felt that more money and media attention helps the iSchool’s reputation as an institution among current students. We also technically have Student Councils appearing here, but this focuses more on contact information specifically, as opposed to specific services and resources offered by them.
To Meet Institution’s Needs & Students’ Needs:
The institution’s needs may include various types including the basic academic information, updating notices, recent courses timetables and syllabi repository, and enhancing the institution’s reputation. The information presentation needs can be met by organizing scheme in the scientific way. And the homepage layout can present the recent important notices to students quickly and directly. The contacts of donations, promotions and media are displayed under contacts section, which can meet the institution’s need to be more accessible for the public.
The students’ needs include checking information on programs, research, finance, services, careers, recent notices, or important contacts, and they may also want to get a quick access to different U of T websites, and the social media platforms in a convenient way. Throughout the global navigation, they can get access to topical information categorically. It saved their time from searching everything in the traditional way. And they can visit other U of T websites quickly by using the upper right links of the global header. Also, they can use shortcuts on the homepage and the quick links to get recently updated information conveniently. By the A-Z directory and the sitemap, students can visit subpages if they have any personal preference to do so.
ReadMe file
To develop a new scheme of the “Current Students” portal, we decided to firstly re-organize the existing labels of “Global header” and “local navigation”. Through an affinity diagram, we brainstormed and sorted all the ideas into meaningful piles. Specifically, we grouped our ideas into 10 categories: About, Programs of Studies, Finances, News & Events, Research & Faculty, Services, Careers & Networking, Contacts, Social Media Links, U of T Links. Next, by identifying the duplication and articulating the wording, we combined the items with the existing available global and local navigation labels. Besides, we proposed to add quick links to the global footer, including Courses, Timetables, Degree requirements. Meanwhile, we decided to put the social media links in the global footer, and U of T links to the upper right corner above the major navigation labels.
With an insight on our new scheme of global header and local navigation, we started to develop our rapid prototype with Axure 8. We implemented our proposed scheme in the first version of prototype. In order for the visitors to be able to return to the home page anytime, we linked the homepage to the “iSchool logo”located at the top left corner of the global header. For each subpage, we mainly drew the local navigation and primary contents, regardless of the possible tertiary navigation and collateral contents. After reviewing the draft, we changed the “Degree” label under “Programs of Study” to “Degree requirements” for consistency inside the site, meanwhile, a sitemap and A-Z directory are added to the global footer for convenience.
Special instructions are that we adapted acronyms while naming some labels, namely DAIS, MISC, and MUSSA; and to help with the rapid prototype navigation, the sitemap and A-Z directory can be used as a tool.
Rapid Prototype
Please check via this Axure Share Link.
