Overview of the usability issues
Group: Donald Hampton, Saul Ortega, Gurdeep​ Sandhu
Why is solving this problem important for interactive products?
There are hundreds of thousands of students around the nation that need to track the varying requirements, polices, category weights, assignments count, and more for their multiple classes throughout the semester. Today our students are spending tens of thousands of dollars to purse higher education, with the majority of platforms being used to deliver content to the students lacking critical features and design principles that inhibit our ability to focuses on what's most important... acting on assignment within a timely manor and learning the content at hand. ClassFlow is here to demonstrate the new standard of interactive design that should be expected by our students around the nation.
Why is this necessary?
We have far too many students that struggle to meet deadlines, properly delegate time, and prioritize classes and assignments. All of which leads students to spend more time playing a game of “catch up” or “how can I pass” searching through syllabus content, due dates, and late policies​
Why is this significant?
This problem is significant because the lack of a clear, centralized system for managing academic work directly affects student performance, stress levels, and long-term academic success. When students struggle to keep track of deadlines, grading policies, and assignment priorities, they are more likely to miss work, fall behind, and experience academic burnout.
What makes your proposal stand out?
​Our proposal is a system that can adapt to your goals and preferences as a student. Its removes the standard static structure of class databased tools by introducing features that allow the students to priorities what information is most important to them to achieve their educational goals.
Defined target audience
The target audience for our design is are students, particularly those enrolled in full-time or part-time undergraduate/postgraduate programs. These students are directly affected by the challenges of managing multiple courses, deadlines, grading policies, and academic expectations across different platforms. They stand to benefit the most from a centralized system that improves organization, prioritization, and time management.
User Research
The research focused on the current student approaches to the management of academic responsibilities and where their biggest challenges occur. We performed primary research through a combination of surveys and interviews, targeting students within the Towson University and nearby colleges. In the survey, we were able to capture data of the students' habits, like how often they miss assignments, what devices they use, and which notification methods they prefer. These helped us to identify common patterns-such as frequent difficulty in tracking deadlines and a strong desire for better reminder systems.
The results of our survey of 11 college level students yielded the following data key data to confirm this issue exists with our user base
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55% of students surveyed do not know how to prioritize assignments.
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100% of students have missed an assignment due date.
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Of those students that have missed an assignment due date 73% agree that a better system for tracking would prevent this.
Interviews were then used to gain deeper, qualitative insight into students' experiences. Participants spoke of personal challenges, frustrations with existing tools, and the emotional impact of feelings of disorganization or overwhelm. These conversations acted as a guiding reference throughout the design process, ensuring that the features we propose truly align with the needs and expectations of real users. Coupled together, both methods gave us a holistic view of the problem, enabling us to design a solution based on real student behaviors and anchored in meaningful data.
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Our primary interviewee was Cameron Rozankowski -
Mr. Rozankowski hold a Batchelor's degree in International Relations from Rollins College, and is currently enrolled at a American University perusing a Master degree in United States Foreign Policy.
Correspondence with Mr. Rozankowski was done over phone interviews to understand the needs and struggle has is currently facing during his time at American University regarding assignments tracking. He was also used as a consultant for the interface design by providing feedback on sign in options, dashboard information, and interactive/responsive elements within interactive page elements. He also stressed the importance of simplicity within the design. Current application are far to complex and slow to navigate to find the information he needs. His feedback was critical to ensuring our design continues to develop solutions for the real world end users, align our solutions with students studying at the highest level.
Design Methods
We developed our design by first brainstorming ideas as a group based on the problems that students shared in our surveys and interviews. We wrote down main issues such as missed deadlines, confusing policies, and lack of reminders, and used those to help lead our early ideas.
We created rough sketches to get an idea of what the system should look like and how it should feel. These helped us pinpoint what features were most important: reminders, a clean overview dashboard, clear prioritization of assignments.
As we refined the design, we showed early versions to some of our interview participants so we could make sure our ideas match their needs. Their feedback helped us adjust the layout, simplify certain features, and keep the design focused on the real problems students face.
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