DIGITAL LIBRARY
IMPROVING THE USABILITY OF CAMPUS INFORMATION SYSTEMS
University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien (AUSTRIA)
About this paper:
Appears in: INTED2013 Proceedings
Publication year: 2013
Pages: 3528-3534
ISBN: 978-84-616-2661-8
ISSN: 2340-1079
Conference name: 7th International Technology, Education and Development Conference
Dates: 4-5 March, 2013
Location: Valencia, Spain
Abstract:
Most Campus Information Systems (CIS) have grown over years to the present state and thus have become difficult to use and difficult to maintain. The main reason for this is that new functionality just has been added when the need for it came up and the pressure to provide this functionality reached a threshold which in turn made it necessary to provide a quick and sometimes dirty implementation.
In the present study we asked computer science students to redesign the user interactions of our campus information system at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien according to the following questions.
1) Which functionality do you need most?
2) Which subsets of a given functionality do you need on a screen?
3) How do you want the screen to be organized?
This was done for a new mobile version as well as for the traditional intranet version of the system. Around 30 students have been involved into the design. It is easy to understand, that the student point of view can only be found by involving students themselves, as none of the programmers of the CIS are students and therefore simply are not able to imagine the real needs and desires of students.
In the planed paper the detailed functionality and screen design is described. Especially the screen design can be used as a basis for many other CIS, as the needs of students are very similar in many Universities.
Keywords:
Campus Information System, Usability, User Centered Design.