SENIOR PROJECT
BACKGROUND
Connect Carolina is UNC-Chapel Hill’s integrated administrative system. Through this system, UNC students and staff interact with departments such as student administration, human resources, finance, and payroll. Interacting with Connect Carolina is an essential part of the Chapel Hill experience (especially for undergraduate students). As a UNC undergrad, I had noticed that many of my peers were expressing frustration over their experiences with Connect Carolina. These frustration continue to grow after Connect Carolina updated their landing page in 2019. My goal was to provide the Connect Carolina team with recommendations for how to make their update more user friendly. This study was conducted during the spring semester of my senior year at college. It acted as my introduction to UXR, helping me bridge the gap between my academic research background and my interest in UX.
PROBLEM
After Connect Carolina underwent a landing page update, undergraduate students grew even more frustrated with the site. Those frustrations did not die down after the users had learned how to use the site’s new features. This suggested that pain points might be derived from systemic design flaws. A deeper investigation into student interactions with the site was required to ascertain the core usability flaws that were frustrating student users.
METHODS & APPROACH
My methods included some preliminary research (featuring a cognitive walkthrough) and a survey. Originally, I wanted to finish off my project with a focus group, however COVID-19 kept me from following through on that method.
Preliminary Research
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I conducted this research by completing a cognitive walkthrough of the site, posing as myself (a student user). I recorded the issues that jumped out to me as an individual who consistently used the site. In addition, I spent some time on social media browsing through student posts about Connect Carolina. These posts mainly took the form of memes. By filtering through these posts I was able to ascertain students’ most commonly referenced pain-points.
Survey
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The survey was conducted via Qualtrics. It was a long survey, featuring 31 questions total. The survey was sent to the entirety of UNC’s undergrad psychology department, and received 206 full responses. The survey took students about 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Once results were collected, I was able to offer the benefit of an amazon gift card lottery. Students who chose to offer their email addresses were entered into a lottery to win one of ten $25 dollar amazon gift cards. These cards were purchased through a $250 grant I was awarded for my research.
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I hypothesized that different groups of students would have different experiences working with the updated site. The survey worked by analyzing students in three separate groups: older (arriving prior to the update), newer (arriving post update), and transfers (who could compare the Connect Carolina with their previous school's site). I utilized piping to ensure that students were asked only questions most relevant to their group. All students were also asked some general questions, providing me with demographic data and information about how they typically accessed the site.
FINDINGS & SUGGESTIONS
Cognitive Walk-Through
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During the cognitive walk-through, two issues in particular stood out to me. The first was that users were expected to reach a navigation menu through an inverted triangle at the top center of the page. From the perspective of a user, the inverted triangle did not meet my mental models of navigation components like a burger and kebab menu would. The second issue related to three consecutive dots that would appear at the bottom of the user’s screen regardless of the device they were using (i.e. phone or laptop/desktop). Despite the fact that these dots appeared in all cases, they were only useful for cell phone navigation. Users could not swipe across their screens or in any way interact with the dots on a laptop or desktop browser, defeating their signified intention. Even more problematic was the reality that the dots failed to inform the user of their navigation because they would remain solid regardless of what page the user landed on. There were no changes in coloration or opaqueness that could inform users which of the three pages they were viewing.
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To remedy these issues I suggested the following ...
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The site likely doesn’t need sub menus in the first place. The homepage could be separated into sections rather than pages. If pages are necessary, the page change function could be placed within the burger menu icon on the far right corner at the top of the screen.
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The dots are only useful for cellphone browser navigation. Connect Carolina should not focus on designing the site for cellphone navigation in the first place since students would find cellphone navigation more challenging. If the team does choose to keep the dots, then they should change them so that only one dot is filled in (while the rest remain clear) when the user transitions between pages.
Social Media Analysis
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During social media analysis I noticed that some students were very good at articulating their main frustrations with Connect Carolina through their memes. These frustrations typically included a strong dislike of the enrollment process, annoyance at 2-factor authorization, and references to Connect Carolina’s log-out bug. Many of these issues were even further expanded upon in the survey.
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My suggestions were as follows…
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Connect Carolina must correct their crisis of reputation. Students were frustrated at the enrollment process (which is run by the Student Administration office), but they took out their anger out on Connect Carolina. The Connect Carolina team should make their purpose clearer to students, separating their system from the official departments that also use it.
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Issues with programs like 2-factor authorization couldn't be fixed. I had no suggestions because such systems operate outside of the Connect Carolina Team’s control.
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For glitches I recommended that the Connect Carolina team work with their developers to uncover the causes of the bugs and fix them accordingly.
Survey
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The survey had many open ended questions, allowing me to collect a variety of in-depth responses. My survey checked for variability between new, old, and transfer students. I also asked all the students questions about general components of the site.
Core Findings (all students)
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I found that UNC undergraduates spend quite a bit of time on Connect Carolina (accessing it anywhere between once a week and every couple of weeks). Searching for, signing up for, and adding/dropping classes was the top activity performed by student users (at 66.00%). Most students accessed (and preferred to access) Connect Carolina through their laptop or desktop. In general, most people did not believe Connect Carolina to be very user friendly.
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These findings supported my hypotheses that students used their laptops and desktops more than mobile devices when accessing Connect Carolina. It also supported my belief that students strongly felt the site featured a variety of design flaws, causing persistent frustration. I suggested that Connect Carolina’s design should be formatted first and foremost for ease of navigation on a laptop or desktop. Users greatly preferred a larger screen when completing their tasks. Some students also referenced that the site’s appearance was outdated, but I recognized that the appearance of the site was something that could not be changed since Connect Carolina was built with PeopleSoft Software.
Older Students
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These students felt Connect Carolina was harder to use after the update, though most students were able to get used to the site after experiencing a learning curve. Students simply accepted the challenges associated with the site. I also found that, while students did not feel that the Connect Carolina Team could have done more to prep them for the update, others wished to see more apparent help resources when updates occurred (like video tutorials).
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My suggestion for the Connect Carolina team was to increase interaction with their students users, and provide them with more resources when they alter their site.
Newer Students
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I found that there was little difference between newer students and older students in terms of their opinions on Connect Carolina’s usability.
Transfer Students
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Transfers frequently showed a stronger preference for their previous schools’ administrative sites over Connect Carolina, suggesting that Connect Carolina has fundamental design flaws.