Smart Student

is an application designed to help

Curtin Students

(specifically first years) with managing their

Enrolment, Payments

and

Timetable.

This project was a redo of the existing

student management system

known as the 'Curtin Oasis'.

Introduction

One of the many things you hear around Curtin is undoubtful how much everyone hates the Oasis Website. Whether this is due to: the enrolling system, sanctions, navigation or even the ugly colour scheme, someone always finds something wrong with the website. Although most people dislike it, no one hates it more than first year students (regardless of language capabilities) who are the ones that must experience the Oasis website for the first time.

The solution: an iPad/Kiosk application (dedicated to first year students), that is tailored to the users’ personal needs and allows students to find relevant and useful information in one place.

Research Scope

To do this, conducting a series of interviews lasting between 10 to 30 minutes with around 8 different people should be enough to collect information on what exactly students hate about the website and how it can be improved. In the future, techniques like shadowing and observing users using a future prototype will be used to gather more data. Users will be grouped by age, gender, international or national and year of study (some students beyond first year could give information about their experience in first year).

Key Areas:

The Enrolment System (from my personal experience I struggled with this).
The Payment System.
Relevant Student Information (eStudent, Blackboard etc).
...and any other issues encountered by first year students on the Oasis website in order to create a solution for first year assistance.

Research Findings

For the most part the interviews went quite smoothly. Being that I mostly was acquainted (either on first name basis or at least had seen them around) with the interviewees helped them open up a little with their answers and encouraged them to be more honest as well as the interviews not being nearly as awkward.

Results:

When first enrolling, students tend to ask for help (via phone or asking a friend).
Users tend to have not experienced any previous enrolling systems.
Students tend take more than a necessary amount of time to find relevant topics/information.
Students who had sanctions on their accounts tend to not know what to do and had to call student services.
Students wished for the Oasis to be more colourful and/or customisable/personalised.
Users tend to like applications that are minimalistic and simple as well as use iconography in its design.

Other Student Services:

In-Person Channel

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