For my senior project my team members and I worked with the client The Ole School Alumni Group. The goal of the project was to create a system that connected students to mentors and scholarship opportunities. The Ole School alumni Group works with underepresented students at James Madison University to connect them to opportunities and even grant scholarships
CHALLENGE
The challenge for this project was to collaborate with computer information systems students to create a system that connects to a database to connect students the Ole Schoolers work with to opportunities, mentors, and jobs. At the end of the semester the client chooses the best system to win.
SOLUTION
- Design a system that allows students to browse internships, opportunities, and communicate with their mentors.
- Create a messaging feature on the system to streamline communication
View Prototype
ROLE
Front-end Developer and User Experience.
TIME
15 weeks
TASKS
I designed the wireframes, prototype, digital content (banners), helped implement bootstrap into the code, and conducted user research.
TOOLS
Visual Stzdio Code, Visual Studio, Adobe XD, Github, Bootstrap, SQL, Canva
EMPATHIZE
Research
When we were all first introduced to the client at the begining of the semesster, none of us had heard of them. Our teachers told us a little information, but it was up to us to reach out to the client and do our own research.
One of the first events related to the client that I attended was "getting to know Ole School Alumni" where the members presented and spoke about the organization. I quickly learned how much of an amazing group I was working with. The Ole Schoolers all graduated from JMU years ago, where they formed this group for underepresented students at JMU. At the event we got to hear from students who have been directly impacted by OSAG, and that really helped me see how important this project was.
I started my research by creating a basic survey that would be sent out to the students who are currently working with OSAG. We asked the students things they would want to see in the system as well as any inspiration suggestiosn they have for us. Multiple students responded that they preferred the look of websites like Indeed and Handshake.
Brainstorming
Here are some of my initial sketches before I even started meeting with the group.
DEFINE
Personas
I created these two personas based off of our primary users of the system: The student and the mentor:
Prototype
I created these prototypes using Adobe XD.
IDEATE
Usability Testing
After mutliple meetings with the client walking through our system each sprint, we made changes that resulted in our finalized product. At first, our approach was too minimal, and with client suggestion we added more photos and the "ole school" feel to the system and we climbed to the top 3 finalist at the end of sprint 3.
Here is a final walk through of our system: