Abstract:

This paper highlights the presentation of User-Friendly design and its impact on Productivity. The aspect that is being considered is the CMS(Content Management System) interface which is used by faculty at the university (NUST), to update, access and evaluate the students' records and data.The problems of information overload are not insurmountable and the easiest way to confront this information gap is to apply the philosophy user-centered design. As Mashall McLuhan states that “Our age anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's jobs with yesterday's tools”.

User-centered design does not mean systems that make decisions for user. Systems advising users for decision making do not necessarily result in best performance.(Endsley & Kiris, 1994; Kibbe,1988; Selcon,1990). Similarly, presenting users the information needed at given moment, or asking and giving them what they want do not suffice the problem. Users have only partial ideas about what might be better. (Designing for Situation Awareness, An approach to User-Centered design, Endsley and Jones).

The idea was driven from the problems faced by the university staff while logging in and using the system. The terms used to name the main tabs and the categories of these tabs were not even relevant to the given name that was not only hard for the novices but also to the regular user when it comes to find a new information. The user is supposed to hover around all of the tabs to find the desired option/category. So it was the need of the hour to come up with more challenging yet user friendly interface that facilitates the staff yet position the CMS as a better interface.

The methodology aims to update the CMS design to ease out the basic and regular tasks that are carried out by faculty members. The prototype for the enlisting the user-friendly design considerations would be done on paper, before being analyzed for reviews and possible alterations.To show the relevance and usefulness of the patterns collection for usability professionals with a mixed background, the relevant findings would be presented and validation of the reviews collected.

The reviews initially would be taken from a limited faculty members which have acknowledged the design and usability issues with the CMS. These reviews would then be evaluated and the design of the application would be updated accordingly. Using patterns collection for documenting design knowledge and experience has been a mixed experience, so we discuss pros and cons of this. Finally, we present related work and future research.

Keywords:

User Centered Design, Interface.