Senior Design Projects

ECS193 A/B Winter & Spring 2019

RAMS - user experience

Email **********
Shane Waddell
JMIE/NRS

Project's details

RAMS - user experience
The Reserve Application Management System ( http://rams.ucnrs.org/ ) is a web-based platform for managing research, teaching, and other use at Reserves in the Natural Reserve System ( http://www.ucnrs.org/ ). It handles applications and reservations, including housing, vehicles, and staff-time requests. It tracks user information and provides reporting metrics for types of use and users. It includes a calendar of activities and it manages billing. However, its presentation is dated and users find it cumbersome.
Students would be asked to improve the user experience by providing suggestions for upgrades to the interface and possibly system architecture. This would include: • Stakeholder interviews and/or questionnaire regarding need for improvements in the user interface, includes researchers, teachers, public, site managers, and administrators • Assessment of the system: o First-timer – what is confusing to a new user? o Repetitive user – what is repetitive or cumbersome? o Manager/Administrator – Is there information not needed? o Other issues? • Content Audit – Dive into the current website’s content, identifying highlights and gaps and flagging opportunities for improvement • Examine the back end of the system look for structural improvements to the database to speed up the processing, exclude redundancies, and improve dataflow.
• Results of interviews/questionnaires identifying common themes or needs • Proposed improvements to the front end • Story boards and/or web page examples of improvements • Proposed improvement to the back end
• Sense of style with web layout and design • Interest in user experience studies and design • Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript ( web development ) • Knowledge of mySql and Ruby on Rails
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30-60 min weekly or more
Open source project
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