AET GUIDE
Since the Arts and Entertainment Technologies major at UT is relatively new, it can be difficult for students to really understand what each class they sign up for will be like and what projects they will work on for that course. Thus, a couple of my friends and I decided to design and code a whole website that will solve this issue by providing students and faculty a portal where all AET courses are displayed with student ratings, past and current syllabi, as well as previous student projects.
The Challenge: Research AET students and professors' needs when it comes to looking up courses online and design a website that provides them with the content they need to accurately choose courses to take/teach in the future. The website will work on both mobile and desktop and will be accessible for users through a clean UI, reducing clutter and improving user flow.
Solution: Considering the factors and the user feedback obtained through the surveys, usability studies, and concept testing I conducted, my team and I were able to propose a successful, functioning, and well designed website option for the UT Fine Arts department.
Outcome: The Fine Arts department at UT gave us the opportunity to work with them to redesign our website to fit UT guidelines and be set under UT's official page.
The Process:
Step 1:
Research & Wire framing
Step 3:
Final Prototype Design & Usability Testing
Step 2:
Wire frame Concept Testing
Step 4:
Working with UT
Step 1: Research & Wire framing
The first part of my research included writing out a survey that was sent out to a large number of AET students. 60 students responded pointing out the difficulties they face during registration as well as insight on what type of information they think would help them choose classes that better fit their interests.
​
Taking into consideration the survey responses, two sets of wireframes were created. Each had design differences but most notably one included an additional navigation organization feature, while the other didn't.
I created the set of wireframes found below:
Home Page
GAMMA Courses Page
Instructor Page
Add a Review
Course Specific Page
Step 2: Wireframe Concept Testing
Two versions of the wireframes were used to concept test our website. 30 AET students went through our clickable wireframes and were all able to complete the various tasks that were given (select a course, leave a review, etc...). This confirmed that the website UI was well designed and navigation was not a problem.
​
Additional key notes received during testing:
-
No need for an additional navigation feature for the course pages
-
Rewording of certain buttons/sections for better understanding
-
Making sure "Instructor page" was also part of the navigation bar
Step 3: Final Prototype & Testing
Keeping all our previous research in mind, my team and I created a fully functioning website implementing my design for both web and mobile. Although my vision for how the website pages should look like were not fully developed into the website due to coding limitations, the finished product prototype can be viewed by following these links below:
​
View Fully Developed Prototype:
Here are some of the original designs that I created:​
Course Page Design (Desktop)
1
2
3
4
Colors on website incorporate
UT's standard color palette
Actual Student Reviews cannot be displayed on my portfolio due to confidentiality.
Students can flag reviews that they find inappropriate, which takes them to a form to fill out.
Course Summary, Syllabi, and Past Student project examples based on semester
Desktop vs Mobile Screens
All GAMMA Courses Page
Past Project Page
Add A Review Page
Step 4: Working with UT
One great outcome that came out of our website was catching the eye of UT Faculty. Our instructors were very impressed with our work and made sure that the department of fine arts registration services knew about our project.
With that, our group was offered to work with UT in order to implement our website under their official website by adhering to UT's guidelines. Although in doing so we were unable to include a lot of things we had on our original website, we were allowed to share our project to many AET students who benefitted from it greatly. Our UT AET website is now being monitored and edited by the fine arts department and they have full access to it in order to make sure all information is up to date.