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Project Background
Project Background
The Office of the Registrar approached the NYU Usability Lab to evaluate interfaces that are used by students to register for academic courses in Albert, NYU's student information system.
After receiving community complaints, the Albert team wanted Usability Research to provide data-driven guidance on how to best improve the experience for students.
Product: NYU Albert, the system of record for student information, including grades, course registration, and transcripts. The system is used by 50,000 NYU students annually.
Project timeframe: 7 weeks. October-December 2018.
Audience: 5 graduate and 5 undergraduate NYU students from Stern School of Business, The School of Professional Studies, Wagner School of Public Health, NYU Abu Dhabi, Silver School of Social Work, and NYU Steinhardt.
Stakeholder: NYU Office of the Registrar
NYU Albert student portal.
The Study
The Study
Research Method: Contextual Inquiry
10 students were observed in their own environments as they registered for their courses in Albert during the university's Open Enrollment period.
During sessions, participants were explicitly asked to:
Explain any areas of ease or frustration as they registered for courses.
Provide a definition of Albert and it's capabilities.
Discuss their wishlist for Albert - what they wish the system did.
The Usability Lab hoped this natural observation would mimic true-to-life successes and failures with the system.
Research Sessions
Research Sessions
The sessions were held one-on-one between a facilitator and a research participant and lasted for 30-45 minutes. They were hosted online on the web conferencing platform Zoom and recorded for post-session analysis.
Analysis
Analysis
After research concluded, the Lab transferred their notes to separate post-its and conducted an affinity diagramming activity to visualize patterns from the research findings. Affinity diagramming also allowed them to see how frequently a piece of feedback was given across all 10 users.
Screen capture of a usability test session.
Analysis of usability findings through an affinity diagramming activity.
Key Takeaways
Key Takeaways
The Usability Lab created a user journey to highlight areas of student frustration during their course registration process.
Students were completing a number of actions OUTSIDE of Albert when it came to course registration. For example, planning and finalizing their course schedule was a huge part of the registration process that they were currently doing on personal calendars and by manually taking notes.
Lab's Recommendation: Highlight the My Planner feature on Albert's homepage.
The interface included outdated information that was confusing, cluttering, and caused excess scrolling such as course listings from 1941 at the top of the course search page.
Lab's Recommendation: Remove outdated information.
Having a functioning search bar was very important for students, who used it to search for almost anything.
Lab's recommendation: Undertake a data project to ensure the search bar returns accurate results.
Students were getting lost in the system because of inconsistently designed screens.
Lab's recommendation: Streamline the design and placement of buttons and links from screen to screen.
A list of user research findings allowed engineers to prioritize and plan what to tackle first.
Impact
Impact
Student experience: quick interface edits were made to improve student experience, such as streamlining the look of buttons and removing out-dated information.
Business decisions: Results informed Registrar decision to stay with PeopleSoft, the platform Albert is built on, over another vendor.
Resource allocation: The results influenced their product road-map, setting clear priorities and scope for the Engineering Team. They were able to assign tasks and hours to each action item.
Before and after of the Course Search screen after usability research.
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