We found that sponsors wanted to see projects relevant within their field, and know how to sponsor. Students wanted to be able to find projects within their program quickly and didn’t want to be overwhelmed by the navigation features. Instructors want to use the site to show past project examples to student, and have the submission process be more concise.
You can view the currentiSchool Capstone Archive site here.
The new home page has a rotating banner to display a variety of important information pertinent to the capstone program such as current iSchool partnerships, how to sponsor projects, award winning projects, etc.
The page also, intentionally presents different browsing options to the user in a way that makes the page more fluid in how the user searches through projects. It displays project cards in an assortment of relevant topics to give users a sufficient starting point when browsing.
We wanted to give students autonomy in how their information is presented on their project page, but in order to stay within the iSchool branding guidelines, we decided to streamline that process into templates that students can choose from on the form itself.
Each team can describe the challenge, outcome, and impact to give a more holistic view of the entire project. They also have customizable main content sections to input whatever material they feel is necessary to fully describe their project, as well as section for next steps.
On the side of the page, users can see the year, sponsor, status of the project, and any links that are relevant.
At the bottom of the page, they are able to choose relevant topics and technology tags relating to their project.
For our next steps, we will first compile hand off documentation so that the next group that works on our project can pick it up seamlessly.
In regards to development, we would like to spend more time developing the home page and its navigation and filtering features.
For the UX side, if our group had more time and our next steps would be to conduct usability testing with our target audience and continue to iterate and improve the design.
Lastly, as this project approaches completion in the future, there would need to be hosting set up for our project in order to support the deployment and eventually the release of the new capstone archive!
Thank you to Nam-ho, our capstone sponsor and instructor, who guided us through the entire project and made our capstone experience unforgettable!
