Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Word, Group Collaboration, Usability Testing, Research, Critical Thinking

Say you are struggling to put food on the table and are looking for services that may help. Where do you look? Maybe through a local church? A local food bank? Arizona State actually offers several resources to students, on-campus or remote. The problem is these programs are not utilized by students as much as they could be.

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For this project, my team of five was tasked with understanding why online part- time students specifically were not accessing these available resources. Over the next 7 weeks, we conducted usability tests, surveys, and interviews to answer this question.

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Through this data, we came to understand that there was both a lack of awareness of these programs and a usability issue with the website. It was incredibly difficult to navigate to the student services page from the home page. In the end, each teammate created a separate mockup, each representing our vision for the changes that should be made to fix the usability issue. My mockup was created using Illustrator and Photoshop and shows a minimalist approach. The Student Services page became more accessible just by changing a few navigation elements.

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This class was challenging. There was a great deal of work to be done and not much time to do it. The professor’s directives weren’t always clear. Communicating remotely across multiple time zones can be problematic. There are many reasons my group could have failed. Instead, we put our heads down and worked through it. We kept a consistent and productive dialogue with the teacher, and we were patient with each other. If these documents reflect anything, it is an ability to work through challenging circumstances and an ability to listen to others.