Description
DeVry Inc Portal re-design and conversion to Luminis platform
- Consulting for strategic decision-making regarding ideal solutions for UX throughout
- Information re-organization and categorizing
- Information and system integration architecture
- User experience layout and annotated mock-ups
- Support to Project Management documentation and tutorial creation
All above to be implemented for the staff and student portals for:DeVry University, Keller Graduate School and Chamberlain School for Nursing.
Steps
Meetings with Sungard Solutions (company providing the new portal platform) to get an intimate understanding of the Luminis platform, its technology, layout set-up and constraints. Study of past implementations of the platform was also completed to understand their previous (Universities) client cases. This allowed us to understand fully how the information and ‘systems’ (which we referred to as “tools”) would be delivered to students and staff via this platform.
Review and study of each one of the software tools that were being currently delivered through the portal. We needed to understand the underlying restrictions and limitations with regards to how they could deliver information/tools through the portal and how it would appear in each Luminis “window”.
Following this was the re-categorization of every information item and tool that was “served” in the DeVry/Keller/Chamberlain portals into simple new categories. At this point new content pieces that were to be added to the portal were also defined and categorized. This process was completed through extensive meetings with content owners and division directors to get full buy-in.
Once we completed what we called the “Information System Maps” for both the Staff and Student portal we proceeded to set the guidelines for the wire frames. Detailed mock-ups were created in collaboration with the Luminis technical team to certify that all proposed UX positioning and visual layouts were indeed possible. Once every pixel of the design was triple checked with the technology team of Sungard, mock-ups for the “skins” for each of the three brands were developed. Each of them on a separate time line to revise and do detail evaluations by each brand manager and marketing team. Afterwards we proceeded to create the HTML templates for the content entered via the Alfresco CMS.
Finally when all skins were approved we cut and delivered all Photoshop files and all individual skin items to the development team in brand-labeled digital packages along with annotated mock-ups and instructions so they could start the build.
Previously in this process we had also consulted with the client to help define how the new content would be entered into the system. After evaluating various solutions they chose Alfresco as their CMS. Through communications with the development team and Project Manager we learned the exact process of how the information could be entered via Alfresco and we created templates for how the content would display on the portal. Finally we worked with the Project Manager to create the Tutorial files for how to access the portal and its windows, for Alfresco users and how to enter content into the new portal.
Project Challenges:
- Limitation in freedom to design the UX experience as we saw fit due to the highly restrictive Luminis platform layout that forces all content to be delivered via “windows” limiting both the content possible on the page as well as within the “windows”.
- The Alfresco system also had a number of limitations that kept us from using too many visual items to solve some of the UI problems.
- Highly “political” project with many levels of management to approve and review at different stages and different levels of stakeholders.
- Some of the systems that were being served through the portal were older technology that posed many content layout constraints.
Project Date 2009-2010
https://my.devry.edu (not public)
