Case study: Avhs computer and lab web-based reservation tool

Methods: cognitive walk-through // contextual inquiry // prototyping

Tools: sketch // inVision // pen and paper

User:

AVHS Teachers and Staff

Challenge:

Re-design of AVHS's, Eagle Reserve reservation tool.

Apple Valley High School had asked Prime Digital Academy Development students to build them a site that would help the Technology department streamline their rental and reservations of labs, classrooms, computers and other technology. AVHS was using google forms and google calendar to reserve these things. This meant that a teacher had to go onto google and fill our a form, send it in, and wait for and admin to approve or deny the requisition and put it on the google calendar shared by everyone. This made for uncertainty, missed reservations, and made it difficult for last minute changes or reservations.

Goal:

Gain and understanding of the specific equipment, the differences between the categories, and the equipment's’ context of use and transportation. Identify why the current system, and the current version of Eagle Reserve, are broken and why. Gain an understanding of the needs and wants of the people who will be using the system, and what are key pain points.

Research:

I utilized a cognitive walk-through of the current Eagle Reserve site. I made a note of what every button did and where it took me. I tried all combinations and flows that I could think of to get through the site. With every click I asked 4 questions:

1. Is the person/user doing the right thing at the right time? Conceptual Model

2. Can they see what they need to do? Visible

3. Will they recognize? Labeling, Signifiers

4. Will they understand feedback?

Following the cognitive walk-through, myself and 4 of my UX Designer colleagues went to AVHS to administer a contextual inquiry and met with two administrators from the Tech department to get a first-hand look at how they were using their current system as well as watching them use the current app that the dev. students had built for them months earlier. Chatting with the two admins we found out that they wanted to cut the middle person out, getting rid of having to manually plug in the reservations would be a huge time saver as well as a productivity enhancer. Utilizing google forms, google calendar and in person reservations worked, but wasn't efficient. We also found out that they teachers work on a week to week schedule and it would be nice to have a weekly view on the new application as well as being able to reserve multiple days for one item all at once not having to do one reservation at a time.

We took this information from the cognitive walk through and the contextual inquiry and synthesized and prioritized the main pain points of the current system and application.

The current system view of just the google form before submitting to admin for approval:

Prototype:

With the information that was collected, we all came up with our own plan and idea for a prototype to better serve AVHS. I chose to focus on cutting out clicks and streamlining the reservation process for both the teacher and the admin. I used pencil and paper and Sketch to build out my prototypes and added annotations and clickable by using Invision.

The current Teacher and Admin reservation took 10+ clicks to reserve one item for one period in a day. This I thought was much too long and cumbersome to be efficient. Here a few screenshots of how I shortened that sequence within my prototype. You are able to book 4 days and different periods in a week in under 10 clicks. This allows for better efficiency and usability.

Annotated Prototype

Next Steps:

Refinement of these prototypes and then have and administrator and a teacher use them to see how they liked the flow and usability of the prototype. It would give us great feedback for further iteration of this much needed and useful application.