Problem Statement
Table of Contents
Today, students at the Stuttgart Media University face several challenges registering their exams via the student portal “Selbstbedienungsfunktionen”. Most importantly, the exams’ page is difficult to view and use on mobile devices, the page’s structure, as well as its usability, needs to be improved.
The challenges were identified during interviews with Information Design students in the course Interactive Media (Interviews during Interactive Media, 2019), a survey and feedback sessions with Information Design students in the course Mobile Media (Survey during Mobile Media, 2020).
The results of this research should be viewed with reservations. The interviews are rather insignificant because of the small sample size of seven. The surveys are more significant due to their sample size of 37. Still, the sample size should be at least 356, because the student population at the Stuttgart Media University is approximately 4800, as the annual report shows (Stuttgart Media University, 2018). This sample size was calculated with a 95% standard confidence level and 5% standard error margin.
The survey (Survey during Mobile Media, 2020) revealed the following results: Nearly 95% of the Information Design students use either a Desktop-PC or a laptop for registering exams (see figure 3). This may indicate that they do not want to use smaller devices or that the page may need major improvements. The latter suggestion is supported by the answers of the participants to another survey question.
They perceive that the page with a 2.4 average as rather impractical (1 = impractical, ..., 5 = practical) and with a 2.1 as confusing (1 = confusing, ..., 5 = clear). Further, figure 4 shows that 32% of the Information Design students use mobile devices for searching for information about their exams. These answers suggest even more the potential for improvement.
The interviews underpin the survey findings and shed more light on underlying causes (Interviews during Interactive Media, 2019). Most interviewees want to register multiple exams at the same time. Further, they disliked that the layout does not adapt itself to their screen size, but only scales down as a whole from the desktop view. Lastly, the students think that the navigation is difficult to understand and reach due to the menu’s position in the top left for mobile devices.
During the feedback sessions in the course several interesting findings were made. First, the text and the buttons size need to be larger in order to be easy to read and use on mobile devices. Second, less emphasis should be put on the visual design due the more technical focus of the project. Third, a solution needs to be searched for displaying tables not only on desktop but also mobile devices.
The target group of this project are Information Design students at the Stuttgart Media University. They are approximately between 18 and 25 years old. Most of them are early adopters and innovators that are predominantly familiar with new technology and usually know how to use them (Rogers, 2010).