Designing a degree tracker for Rochester Institute of Technology.
Project Link: https://620-2201-group6.pages.dev
Project Scope: Design an interactive dashboard where students can easily track and monitor progress toward degree completion at a glance. Past courses (with credits and final grades), present enrollment, and future requirements will be pulled from the student's information and graphically displayed. The dashboard will display key milestones for the student as well as specific alerts to let them know of time-sensitive information. Currently, the Student Information System (known internally as SIS) is used to find the courses students completed as well as how many credits they’ve earned toward each facet of their degree (core classes, electives, etc.). The process as a whole is fragmented, confusing, and time-consuming.
Tools: Figma and Miro
Research Methods: Interview
Process: Interviewed 10 participants, analyzed their answers, constructed charts, and created an affinity diagram. Created low and high-fidelity prototypes.
Results: Overall, our prototype was well received by participants. The new prototype is preferred over the SIS system unanimously. Although one user felt the SIS system had more information available, all five users did not feel that the SIS system was easy to use to perform the tasks at hand, and strongly preferred the new prototype.
Usability Test for MeetingMap.com
Link to Document: https://bat-viola-5yx4.squarespace.com/s/MeetingMap_FinalDocument.docx
Project Scope: Researchers in the Human-Computer Interaction program at RIT conducted a usability test of Meetingmap.com that included a kickoff meeting with the client, heuristic evaluation of the product, usability testing, and recommendations. Meetingmap is designed to offer a personalized approach to managing extensive online interactions, allowing users to monitor teams, topics, engagement, and relationships over time and across various platforms. For this project, 41 heuristics were used to focus on the core functionalities of the desktop version of Meetingmap.com. The evaluation focused on usability and accessibility.
Process: Usability testing was conducted over one week, which included 10 participants and a pilot participant. The participant profile included all genders and a variety of age groups, and had both students and professionals. The testing focused on four case scenarios that covered the platform onboarding experience and using the iClerk chatbot feature. During the test sessions, iClerk was invited to each session as a participant, which generated audiovisual recordings and transcripts through Meetingmap. Additionally, the meetings were recorded directly on Zoom.
Methodology: The team used the research questions and the heuristic evaluation results to pinpoint four participant workflows within Meetingmap.com to be tested:
Connecting a participant’s calendar to Meetingmap.com and locating meetings on the calendar
Using iClerk’s chatbot feature to summarize and extract specific information from existing recordings of meetings
Inviting iClerk to participate in a meeting with an existing link
Creating a “short” video from an existing recording of a meeting
Alert notification app for deaf drivers
Link to Document: https://www.margaretricottaportfolio.com/s/Assignment5_Submission.pdf
Project Scope: Researched a design for an app that design of an app for deaf or hard-of-hearing drivers to warn and present emergency vehicle information while driving. Questions answered after the research and design were: What are the most important alert features a deaf user would need to be aware of in an emergency vehicle while driving, and what are the preferred methods for alerting the drivers?
Tools: Figma
Research Methods: Interview / Workshop
Process: Designed 2 prototypes to be integrated with CarPlay since it displays apps on the car dashboard, and the drivers can easily view the new alert through the dashboard. Two deaf drivers evaluated the prototypes that alert deaf drivers of oncoming emergency vehicles. The participants evaluated the prototypes, answered ten questions, and offered their feedback and preferences.
Results: A flashing icon or other symbol is the preferred method per the responses of the two participants. A glance to see something flashing, without having to read a lot of text, is the method these two participants prefer in designing an alert app for deaf drivers.