About NAIS
NAIS is a system where students with various functional variations can apply for special educational support at Swedish universities.
The challenge
The biggest challenge for me during this project was inclusivity and availability. Since NAIS works with people with different disabilities, the UI that I was part of developing had to be intuitive and available for a wide range of different kinds of people. I also took on the role of Project manager, which was completely new to me at the time.
The process
A heuristic evaluation was performed on the current system and Nielsen’s heuristics were used. This evaluation was then analyzed and organized. I did semi-structured interviews with both users of NAIS' service, as well as the target audience. I had to pay extra attention to the ethical and moral rules that comes with doing interviews, since some of the questions were about their psychological history. This also meant that extra attention had to be put to using the right web guidelines when developing the prototype.
A prototype was to be created, and to start I held a brainwriting session. I chose brainwriting and not classical brainstorming which was the recommended technique because brainwriting allows for individual ideation as well. Sketching for the Lo-Fi prototype was done on a whiteboard as a group and since I was the project manager, I held the session.
Layout discussions and moodboard, during the conceptual phase.
The concept that was eventually chosen was the filing-system-concept. The reason for choosing that concept was because an old-style filing system is automatically associated with important documents which one has to pay extra attention to.
A sketched version of the lowfi-prototype's four steps.
The outcome
With the data gathered and the basis for the design choices confirmed, a Mid-Fi prototype was created. The prototype had some elements removed to make it easier on the eyes for the target audience. Tools were also created so that a unique user could have his or her unique UI that fits their needs. Contact information was also made clear all throughout, so that the users would know that help is always close in case they are stuck on some part of the application.
The mid-fi prototype of the proposed new layout.
Takeaways
The main takeaways for me during this project are threefold:
People are different!
And that is something I really like, and it made it a challenge during this project.
Patience, patience, patience!
Since people are different, it might take different lengths of time to complete the same task for different people.
Managing is awesome!
We took turns in the group to be the project manager and it worked out great.
