Context

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated universities to transition into an online / remote learning setup. Loyola Schools (LS), the tertiary level school unit of Ateneo de Manila University, was no exception.

Ultimately, LS students were urged to adapt the use of unfamiliar learning management systems (LMS), task management applications, and scheduling platforms for academic, co-curricular, and personal use.

An banner image of a student confused with the different LMS and task management platforms, and an image of a Google Calendar mockup.

But first, let's meet these two students.

An image of our student persona, Bianca.

Bianca (BFA Information Design)

previous member of uxsoc

She's been in UXSoc for at least a year, but has yet to explore big opportunities in the org.

Bianca feels as if the org's initiatives and projects aren't the most beginner friendly.

Even if this year has been her second in the org, Bianca feels apprehensive about taking on a more active position because of her lack of knowledge or experience in UX and even design in general.

Bianca also feels the need to be in the "inner circle" of the org (e.g. officers, executive board members) to stay relevant in UXSoc.

But it's hard for her to get into that inner circle because of her aforementioned hesitations. It's a cycle!

An image of our student persona, Miguel.

Miguel (BS Psychology)

HAS NEVER JOINED UXSOC

He's a sophomore exploring his options with different orgs. He has only recently found out about UXSoc.

Miguel thinks that UXSoc is mainly a tech org.

He's never heard about UX until now, and immediately equates it to web design, which he subsequently associates with web development, coding, and HTML. "UX" is just another tech jargon for Miguel, and as someone with no technological background whatsoever, he feels apprehensive to join at the least.

Miguel hears that work in UXSoc can get too professional for students.

After all, UXSoc takes in professional projects with actual clients both internal and external to the university. As someone who's still in their second year of college, Miguel mainly wants to balance developing his skill set while being able to have fun in his university org life.

As it turns out, the problem wasn't exactly about students coming from different majors; it was more about UXSoc's stern, tech-centered, and overly professional image that made it unwelcoming for non-technical majors and daunting for those without the expertise.

What made these insights interesting was that the same sentiments were more or less shared between previous members and never-have-been-members alike.

Given these newfound takeaways, we now had our case problem:

Initial Assumptions

Given the uncharted territory of remote learning, initial assumptions were made regarding students and the possible challenges that kept them from efficiently managing their academics:

Students have a heavy load of tasks per week

Most undergraduate students are burdened with an overwhelming load of modules and/or assignments every week. Along with academic requirements, the most of the same students are also working on co-curricular work for their respective student and/or external organizations, and may even be juggling internships, freelance projects, or part to full time work.

There is an overwhelming amount of platforms for students to switch between

Aside from the overwhelming load of tasks, students have to navigate across various platforms (e.g. Moodle, Canvas, Google Suite, Discord, Facebook, etc.) that may or may not be required by their academic institution and/or extra-curricular organizations. Not only is it time consuming to switch between one platform to another, the amount of various platforms to juggle adds to the overall confusion of the student. The inconsistency of platforms may also lead students to forget pending tasks under certain platforms.

Decentralized task-related announcements make it difficult to set boundaries with social- and personal-related notifications

The sheer number of notifications an average student receives each day contributes to their cognitive load. Several communication channels (e.g. email, LMS inboxes, beadles, Facebook groups, etc.) have been utilized to notify students regarding necessary updates, releases, deadlines, etcetera. However, the messy and decentralized implementation of these channels make it difficult for students to keep track of all important announcements. It doesn't help that academic- and/or task-related announcements now alert students simultaneously with their social network notifications, which are interruptive and distracting.

Given these assumptions, we now had our case problem:

How might we be able to alleviate Loyola Schools students' difficulty in tracking their tasks, modules, and schedules?

Turning to the student body

Loyola Schools (LS) students, both graduate and undergraduate, were identified to be the main stakeholders for the case.

To understand our users in a deeper sense, we conducted two user research methods:

Screener Surveys

A screener survey using was distributed among students of the Loyola Schools*. Survey questions were geared towards analyzing the behavioral patterns of LS students with regards to task management and navigating the online academic setting. The survey was able to garner over 40 respondents.

*We wanted our student participants to be diverse as possible, making sure that they came from different majors and year levels.

Stakeholder Interviews

Remote interviews were conducted with 5 selected participants from those who answered the screener survey. Interviews were done through a one-to-one remote setting via Google Meet, a video conferencing platform.

Interview questions were geared towards understanding user beliefs, attitudes, and experiences on:

Their general task management practices and behaviors
The general shift to a remote setting, and how this has affected personal task management
Task management platforms they are currently utilizing

Validating Assumptions

After conducting user research, our team found several pain points that made it difficult for students to perform proper task management during the remote learning setup. The following were the significant pain points raised:

Students find it difficult to keep track of updates and notifications

Updates and notifications from different LMS easily get buried due to sheer volume. At the same time, the users are not also immediately notified of their deliverables which adds up to the difficulty of being aware of such urgent tasks.

Students have to check multiple LMS platforms for updates

Given the multiple LMS platforms being utilized by the university, students find it inconvenient to log in to these platforms just for them to be updated on the notifications from their professors.

Switching between calendars make it harder to keep track of updates

Different calendar applications have been utilized by the students but these have been of little or no avail as there have been difficulties in managing multiple calendars. To explain further, students find it difficult to centralize the calendar they have for academic work with their personal and work calendars. With this, using calendars – more often than not – has become pointless in managing tasks as there are additional and inconvenient steps just to stay updated as well.

Design Prescriptions

The following were the design considerations made to address the aforementioned pain points:

Users should be able to access the platform through a desktop or mobile application.

Most users preferred using bigger screens for task management, so we prioritized desktop screens for the app. Furthermore, since students were working at home, most had access to non-mobile screens such as a laptop or desktop.

Users should be able to get notified through push notifications and / or alarms.

Push notifications provide more urgency for tasks, announcements, et cetera.

An image of One Big Calendar application on a laptop mockup.

DESKTOP APP

push notifications

Users should be able to toggle on / off accounts that they want to be notified about.

Being able to subscribe and unsubscribe certain announcements allows users to manage their notifications better, and may prevent unnecessary alerts from bombarding them.

Users should be able to filter out their calendars, task lists, and notifications.

Filters allow users to minimize their cognitive load. Color-coding makes it easier to identify and filter out information.

An image of One Big Calendar's notification bell toggle feature.

push notifications

filters

color-coding

Users should be able to integrate their Canvas, Moodle, LS announcements, and personal calendar accounts with the platform.

Canvas and Moodle are the two main LMS used by the Loyola Schools. LS announcements and personal calendar accounts are usually connected to the students' official Ateneo email (OBF) through Gmail.

An image of One Big Calendar's LMS and Google integration functionalities.

platform integration

synchronization

Users should be able to sync announcements and tasks from different LMS, admin announcements, and the system's personal calendar.

A single, condensed calendar synced with all of the users' accounts allows for an overview of their tasks and / or schedules in one app.

An image of a mockup screen for the notification hub of One Big Calendar.

synchronization

User Testing

We tested our initial prototypes with 5 users. Below is a summary of insights and recommendations from user testing:

An image with a caption: "I hope to see this in multiple platforms!"

Cross-platform availability

One user suggested to implement the application in different platforms in order to maximize user efficiency.

An image with a caption: "Some texts are hard to read."

Improving color accessibility

The color scheme of the application was generally liked by the users for its aesthetic, but it was recommended to use a darker shade for the aspects that needed emphasis.

Several accessibility issues were also brought up regarding the contrast of some text colors.

An image with a caption: "That's a lot of info."

Reducing cognitive load

Currently, the design is only able to present a calendar view of the application – a few users found this overwhelming. To address this, a dashboard to condense tasks and announcements may be integrated into the design.

Being able to filter out notifications per date, LMS used, subjects, or agenda would also reduce cognitive load for certain views.

Design Prescriptions

The following were the design considerations made to address the our goals for RecWeek:

Online registration

Combining both accredited and unaccredited organizations, there were over 70+ to choose from in the LS. We wanted to stand out by allowing our promotions to be accessible online via a website.

The provision of online registration forms via the website also provided students an additional funnel for membership registration, since most orgs only allowed for physical forms to fill out.

An interactive gimmick to reel students in

We wanted to stand out even more by doing an interactive (and very intentional) gimmick to highlight the difference good UX makes.

WEBSITE

ONLINE FORMS

INTERACTIVE GIMMICK

Inviting, informative, and "easy" copy

Students sought for friendly and digestible content. We made sure to keep our copy as informative as possible while still maintaining its voice to be approachable. Furthermore, we made sure to steer away from heavy terminologies or even tech jargons to make the copy inclusive.

An image sample of how copy was made friendly.

Caption: "User Experience Society. The tea? We make cool websites and have amazing members. The hot tea? UX Society goes beyond just making snazzy websites. In fact, we advocate for human-centered design to solve problems in the community."

INTENTIONAL WEBSITE COPY

A direct way to address student apprehensions and misconceptions

Students had a lot of misconceptions about the org. In the first place, they had a lot of misunderstandings regarding what UX was about. There were also a lot of misconceptions about our member population (not everyone from the org is a Computer Science major!).

An image sample of how copy was incorporated to address copy.

Caption: "Misconception #1: 'Your org is only for tech nerds. I won't fit in.'"

INTENTIONAL WEBSITE COPY

Highlighting what members can do in the org (and it's not just designing and coding!)

Most students were unsure of the ways they can be active in the org, apart from UX design and web development. In reality, there are different paths to take for each student out there, as UXSoc houses multiple departments which require various skills and competencies.

An image snippet of one of the website's sections.

INTENTIONAL WEBSITE COPY

Outcomes

In Summary,

User Experience Society's RecWeek 2019 website served as an informative organization primer for interested students and was crafted in order to recruit more students into membership. Aside from information dissemination and promotion, the provision of online registration forms via the website also provided students an additional funnel for membership registration.

View Figma Prototype ↗

The website launch, together with HR-led initiatives, boosted the online presence and engagements with the organization, and increased membership population by approximately 29% from the previous year. The org's member pool diversified, with students coming from 33 various courses; although majority of the population still ended up coming from tech-related majors, small steps were coming along to eradicate the misconceptions against the org being only for tech majors. In total, the org was able to recruit over 330+ students during Recweek 2019, with 8% of members having registered online.

Aside from these numbers, plenty of students testified to having been drawn by the interactive website and how the org was able to creatively introduce UX for them.

Outcomes

In Summary,

One Big Calendar is a web and mobile app that serves as a one-stop platform for calendars, tasks, and notification updates.

View Figma Prototype ↗

One Big Calendar, being a streamlined and synchronized platform for calendar and notifications, aims to make it easier for university students to manage their tasks. Our proposed design solution focuses on maximizing Google and LMS integration and synchronization in order to centralize schedules and notifications coming from various platforms into one application. At the same time, integrating Google Calendar will allow students to utilize functionalities that come along with the Google platform such as being able to add, delete existing scheduled tasks.

Although this was a conceptual study pursued for academic purposes, our project received multiple recognitions from our professor / project advisor and students who were keen on implementing the project. With this, our team reached out to individuals with web development experience, most of which stated that the project was feasible enough to move forward with in terms of technical development. Given more time and manpower between the academic semester, we would have loved to bring this project to life!

A banner image of the final mockups for One Big Calendar.

Reflections & My Gratitude

Ultimately, the project was a success – but here are a few reflections:

Given more time, I would have continued iterating the design of the platform, making sure that all user flows were accounted for.
Even with the success of the project, I do realize that even the best platform can still fall under the hands of those who cannot maximize it; One Big Calendar can still end up in the eternal abyss of task management platforms, and ultimately become counter-productive in its use. Thus, we made sure to cater the product to a specific group of users (LS students) so that the product is more specialized and useful for our chosen stakeholders. However, more research and validation can still be done to assess feature prioritization.
It would have also been tremendously helpful to get the insights of university professors and administrators in order to get the bigger picture of how LMS platforms work, at least for the administrative side.
As a student myself (at least at the time of conducting this study!), I realize that much has yet to be discovered and uncovered about the online academic setup. Students, professors, and university administrators alike are still very much new in navigating remote work, so I understand that most sentiments and insights are still very much fresh from this study. I do believe that there is still much to explore about remote work and task management in general, but also I believe that it's high time to be more compassionate and understanding of each other during these trying times.

Huge thank you to our Human Computer Interaction (CS179.5) adviser – Professor Jenilyn Agapito, and my fellow researchers for the project – Erin Yabut and Arvin Enriquez, for their tremendous help and guidance on the project!

I would also like to extend my thanks to each and every student who participated in our research efforts. I know that the remote academic schedule has been quite hectic, so I appreciate those who so kindly lent us their time!

Reflections & My Gratitude

This was probably one of the most time-constrained projects I've ever worked on, as we only had more or less a month for research, design, and development in total before we had to launch the website in time for RecWeek 2019.

That being said, there were still plenty of things to improve on for the project:

We did not get to test the website with students, and thus we were only able to rely on design critiques from our own team to validate our initial mockups. Had we been given more time, we would have definitely prioritized testing the mockups with actual students before RecWeek.
We tried our best to strike the balance between friendly and professional for our copy, but I have to admit, copywriting isn't my forte. Given the importance of good copy for this website, it would have been tremendously helpful to have a dedicated copywriter or content strategist for the project.
The success of RecWeek 2019 for UXSoc cannot be attributed to the website launch alone. HR-led initiatives and Branding efforts still became the primary resource for promotions, engagement, and member recruitment.

Cheers to the RecWeek 2019 team – Cams, Tomy, and Avery – for successfully launching the website! The project could not have been a success without Andii and Harvey as well, who never hesitated to lend us a hand from time to time.

I would also like to express my appreciation to Frances, Kate, and Laura, for helping us critique the initial mockups. Their feedback meant a lot and were worth pursuing to the end.