Why AISIS Desperately Needs a Redesign
And Why We Need to Reevaluate Our Perceptions of It
I have a confession.
I hate AISIS so much (not the terrorist group, but Ateneo’s online class enlistment system).
There, I said it.
There’s so much to be irked about in general.
Before every semester, I always dread the fact that I actually have to use the blasted program. I can’t read the text it has with how small the font size is. The fact that you have to press the “Confirm Enlistment” button before you can truly enlist in a class is also really annoying, and don’t get me started on the fact that I have to update all my student information before I have to enlist.
So when UXSoc decided to conduct a research on AISIS and let me lead it, I had mixed feelings when the following results came up from a sample of 136:
68.9% of students believe that the Layout and Design is one of AISIS’ bad points.
This first one doesn’t come as a surprise.
There’s a lot to complain about in AISIS. Here are some that we got.
- 30% of respondents had beef with the ‘Confirm Enlistment’ button.
- 38.5% of respondents believe that the ‘Update Student Information’ function AISIS has is a bad point, relating it to how inconvenient it is that you have to do it before you can even enlist.
- 12.5% of respondents complained that the font was too small, and that you could barely read them.
- “It’s hard to check if the classes I want conflicted or not, especially if I don’t plan my class schedule ahead.”
- “I find it so inconvenient that I have to use CTRL+F in order to find my classes, and it’s so pressuring if it’s one of those classes with slots that run out easy.”
Not to say that AISIS doesn’t have its good points:
- 60% of respondents think that the fact we can access it from any device is pretty nifty.
- 73.3% of respondents think that the ability to check if you have hold orders is a godsend.
- 70.4% of respondents also think that it’s cool that we can download our Load Revision and Change Degree Forms with all our information already on it.
But even if it does have good functions, there’s still a substantial amount of inconvenient things happening whenever we all enlist as students, and we all know that AISIS was made mostly for enlistment. So it’s weird that the good points that AISIS has isn’t even related to its main function.
80% of students surveyed find AISIS easy to use
Do students in Ateneo truly find AISIS easy to use? Like really? Or have we just been primed to believe that it is?
As a senior, I already know AISIS’ kinks and tricks, and I really do vigorously prepare in advance to one-up them. Some of the things I do include setting an alarm a day before enlistment period starts just so I can update my student information. In case I’m part of Batch 2 too, I already have Plan A to G schedule ready. Plus, I also enlist THEN confirm each class first instead of confirming after I enlist all of them.
Good thing we’re mostly aware of all these weird kinks when we enlist ALL our classes at third year. Imagine if we had to start enlisting all of our classes from the get-go as a freshman!
We’re already veterans of this sort of torture. So yes, no matter how I wonder why it ended up like this, it’s undeniable that a sizable amount of our student population think it’s easy and slick.
77% of students find AISIS visually unappealing
They say first impressions matter.
That saying applies to websites too.
It takes about 50 milliseconds for users to form an opinion on a website according to research, and these first impressions last for years and linger long enough to influence a lot of our behavior toward the object in question.
Knowing students find AISIS looks unappealing, it’s very likely that we’ve all had a negative experience of AISIS, just because the way it looks sucks.
It could be because the color is bland and used haphazardly. It could be because the text is too small. But no matter what gets you irked, most of us agree the design sucks.
And to prove that bad design causes bad user interactions, according to a study, unappealing websites didn’t get much positive ratings from testers even if the site theoretically executed every process they had effectively and efficiently.
It’s all about making the right way, the easy way.
So what I’m really just trying to say is that design matters especially in terms of how it is perceived, no matter what the field. If the look of a product matters through its various user’s perception and use, then definitely functional design matters, and User Experience (UX) is all about changing that to something workable, something that’s easy to use in its natural state.
And we at UXSoc believe that AISIS has a long way to go if it’s ever gonna achieve a standard of functional design.
57% Are Not Happy With the Current Enlistment Process on AISIS
Here’s the kicker if we consider the last two results.
We have 80% of students thinking AISIS is easy to use, 77% of students finding it unappealing to the eyes, and 57% of students who aren’t happy with its main functional process of enlisting. And at the start, it might seem like these thing conflict each other, but it really doesn’t.
It makes sense.
Think about it like this: we’ve been conditioned to think it’s easy because there’s no other way of going around the fact that we’re required to enlist through AISIS, unless you favor going through manual registration.
It’s easy because it only takes us 5 minutes tops to finish enlisting for our classes.
It’s easy because we know AISIS’ pitfalls and dangers, and how to avoid them.
What Testing AISIS Could Yield
Let’s consider the theoretical of introducing a person, who knows nothing about AISIS, to test it. Let’s call him Bob.
Bob probably wouldn’t get his favored classes. He probably would have spent a good extra 5 minutes on the ‘Update Student Information’ page wondering why the things he was inputting won’t go through the system. He would’ve probably spent another few extra minutes confused why he didn’t get the class he wanted even if he ‘enlisted in it already’ until he finds out about that he needs to ‘Confirm Enlistment’ before he can actually take the damned slot.
Bob would probably still be able to enlist successfully, but probably not with the classes he originally wanted. Can we consider the testing passable? Yes, we could since the main objective was achieved, but can we say the testing was successful?
To answer that, let’s ask “was the user satisfied?”
Bob would probably reply, “Well, it’s a yes… and no. I got to enlist but just not with the classes I wanted because I got confused.”
Bottom line for those who made AISIS: “Yes, he got to enlist, and that means our system completely eliminates the need to have everyone suffer through manual registration that literally take DAYS to finish.”
Bottom line for the user: “Nope”
It Could Be Better
It’s no secret that AISIS is already a blessing compared to other enlistment systems like CRS from our neighboring university, UP, but it doesn’t mean that AISIS goes without its imperfections.
Small things could be done to fix the problems that already exist in AISIS. Just a quick fix to disarm the “Confirm Enlistment” button issue or by just reformatting the ‘Update Student Information’ page to be easier would already be a great improvement to the student body.
But there are so many things on our wishlists for the ideal enlistment platform:
- “What if we can have an interface that allows us to drag and drop classes instead of selecting them?”
- “Bigger Font [for better readability]”
- “[Classes] that don’t match your [existing schedule] should be removed, like if you have a class you selected, [the] ones that will clash with them [shouldn’t] even be select-able.”
- “Real time updating of class slots without manually refreshing the page, to reduce panic moments while enlisting”
- “The remarks of tagged classes needs a revamp. This is because I, and maybe other students couldn’t enlist in a certain subject because it’s only accessible to only a certain group of people.”
It’s probably not possible to fix ALL of these problems in one simple update, and it’s probably not possible within our lifetime as students if we consider the fact that UXSoc has heard that AISIS has ancient source code. But still, it’s no laughing matter to realize that we’ve been conditioned to think that AISIS is easy to use.
As students, we have to be more aware of what good design looks like.
We shouldn’t be allowing ourselves to lull each other into false pretenses.
We should be critical about the systems we use.
It’s not enough to know that we shouldn’t be abusing systems.
Knowing that we shouldn’t be abused by systems needs to be a thing.
