Chapter 2: User experience
This chapter will define the user experience for the creation of the website. It is important to understand the users and how they will interact with the website. This chapter will define the user experience and the audience for whom the website is developed.
Audience definition – one of the audiences of the website is the students. The website is being developed to be used by students. Students will also want to access the materials from the website. This is for academic purposes. With time, the website will have reading materials for students. Many students will access the website to access these materials.
Other users include web developers who will want to know how the website has been developed. This will help them understand the tools that have been used in the development of the website.
Another group of audience is the faculty members who would want to know what the students are undertaking in the website. They will want to know what the students want to achieve and their aspirations. Faculty members will visit the site for monitoring purposes.
Scenarios
Scenario 1: The first scenario is about John, student who wants to reading materials from the website. John has been searching many websites for reading materials. With the launch of the website, John hopes to get reading materials. John will go from one page to another looking for notes for the course he is taking.
Scenario 2: Johnson is a faculty member who lectures one of the courses in the college. Johnson will visit the website to view the profiles of the students and the discussion that is going on by the students while they visit the website. Johnson would want to know the concern of many students and whether she can be of help. Johnson would also want to be part of the team who has a discussion in the website. This means that there should be a way she can register for membership.
Scenario 3: Erick is a web developer and administrator. Erick will want to know the content that has been posted on the website. Erick is a consultant who will want to know how the website works. Erick will be interested to know what can be improved in the website and so that he can make recommendations to the web developers and owners.
Competitive analysis summary
Many sites that are developed to be used by students lack some features. It is important to understand what the sites have and what the new website should improve. From the analysis, it is clear that many websites lack maintenance so that there will be situations where the website will have the same content for a long time. One of the sites is not updated on a regular basis. The two websites that the competitive analysis will be done is that of Harvard University student portal, and University of Sydney student portals. There is a need to understand the development criteria that has been used in the two websites and what can be gained from the two websites. From the two websites, it is clear that the Harvard University has many student portals that address the student’s needs from different schools within the university. There are advanced features that have been integrated in the development of the website.
References
Jensen, S. H., & Fisker, A. M. Architecture-An Experience Design Tool for Development of Rural Areas. In 4th Conference of the Nordic Section of the Regional Studies Association.
Meloni, J. C., & Telles, M. A. (2008). PHP 6 fast & easy web development. Cengage Learning.
Nakano, R. T., Yee, T. T., Park, B. H., Barr, S. L., Jia, J. S., Hegde, G., & Cochrane, K. (2003). U.S. Patent No. 6,505,212. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Rao Kowtha, N., & Whai Ip Choon, T. (2001). Determinants of website development: a study of electronic commerce in Singapore. Information & Management, 39(3), 227-242.
Richardson, O. (2000). Developing and using a case study on the World Wide Web. Journal of Educational Media, 25(2), 107-114.
Taylor, M. J., McWilliam, J., Forsyth, H., & Wade, S. (2002). Methodologies and website development: a survey of practice. Information and Software Technology, 44(6), 381-391.
Appendix A: Competitive analysis
