Project Timeline
9 Months
January 2020 – June 2020,
September 2020 – December 2020
Western Washington University
Teammates
Chris Drazic
Ryan Taylor
My Roles
Front-End Developer
UX Researcher
Website Designer
Content Developer
User Interface Designer
Tools Used
MongoDB, ExpressJS, ReactJS, Node.js
JavaScript
HTML/CSS
Drupal8
Figma
Skills Used
Interviewing
Stakeholder & Competitor Research
Prototyping
Front-End Development
Content Accessibility
Background Information
Working with Software & Changing Directions
Challenge
How can administrative staff and faculty better evaluate graduate student information and progress, along with being able to communicate program details effectively to current students, prospective students, and the rest of the department?
Research
As my teammates worked on the back-end of the software to ensure the application’s maintainability, I undertook research to identify pain points to better understand how the Computer Science department runs their graduate program. Doing so would allow me to better determine how our project fits into the grand scheme of the department’s process.
Understanding the Current Process
Competitor Analysis
Trying to better understanding other methods of advisement, I conducted a competitor analysis within the WWU Graduate School, its other Graduate Programs, and graduate programs from other universities such as the University of Notre Dame and the University of Washington. This gave me insight on the types of information readily available to current and prospective graduate students, the information structure, and the user flow upon their various websites. Furthering my research of WWU’s methods of user flow, I discovered their website content implementations using Drupal8 and their commitments to making accessible content due to university guidelines of following Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.
Research Analysis
Redesign & Development
Administrative Redesign








Program Content Development



