Dashboard for Students learning online
I love dashboards!
They function similarly, but based on who's using it, there are so many interesting possibilities.
My task was to design a platform (dashboard) that will help students communicate with each other for studies and keep a track of the class schedule, upcoming events, assignment submission & feedback, attendance, test results and overall performance of the student.
First & foremost, I spoke to my end users, in this case college going students.
-Have they studied online?
-If yes, what kind of apps have they used before?
-What did they find useful in these apps?
-What was lacking in them?
After some preliminary data collection and one-to-one discussion, I got some pretty good insights.
Next, I started building a flow, the no of screens, what would they include, what will be the entire flow for a student right from log in page to home, assessment submissions, courses they were taking, submission reminders, a tracker to monitor their progress, which classes were going on in real time and created a basic wireframe.
All this while, I was in touch with a friend of mine, a good dev and I kept checking whether these features were feasible in the scope of the project.
Two main features which students felt were important were :
1) Notifications for lectures and an easy 'Join Class' link
2) Reminders for their upcoming deadlines for assessments.
I have tried to place them both on home page in such a way that they grab attention. Highlighting them in the form of buttons.
For UI, I had a clean & simple idea in mind. Using shades of white for a clean look, greys to highlight information, red if something for urgent and blue since it is calming. Given students would spend a lot of time using the dashboard, I aimed to keep the working simple and look clean.
One hidden in plain sight but useful feature is of language. Now from the development point of view, this would be a task. But for students coming for different as well as vernacular backgrounds, having the option of navigating in their mother tongue would prove very useful.
The home page also shows avg. attendance & test scores so that the student can keep track of their overall progress.
One of the page, Participants, would showcase the class students and teacher's email IDs / contact number so that whenever necessary, for e.g. group projects, students can communicate with each other.
Messages would be an inbound chat space where students can post their doubts regarding any particular topic or anything study related. All the students in that grade & instructors can reply to the messages. It can also be used by teachers for announcements.
Rest of the design will be up soon!
What would you do different or how would you improve this design?
I'd love to hear from you all.