Fall 2022 - Spring 2024
Course Networking is an academic social-networking platform that offers next-generation educational and ePortfolio tools for students, teachers, schools, serving thousands of students and educations around the globe. Covered by NDA.
From August 2022 to May 2024, I worked as a UX intern at CourseNetworking, housed in the former IUPUI CyberLab and Purdue School of Engineering and Technology.
Over this long period, I worked on numerous design and research projects, covering a wide range of the platform's features. A large part of the job was also hearing about the instructor perspective in slight contrast to the student view. Additionally, I worked closely with our global development team and needed to thoroughly outline the logic behind my designs, communicating with them through Jira. And perhaps most specially, this internship was when I first learned how to use Figma, which is now a major part of my life.
These experiences are highlighted because they are all major projects that spanned weeks and that I played a leading role in. This internship was my first work experience in UX and is foundational to the future of my career. Take a look below!
Featured Projects
Screen reader accessibility
It's important that we do our best to meet accessibility standards. I was tasked with reviewing the results of a previous WCAG audit and implementing changes to resolve issues. I specifically focused on issues found using the screen reader, so I learned how to use the VoiceOver screen reader at a basic level to test how well our website performs. I then documented specific cases and collaborated with the developers to resolve those issues. It's very important the screen reader users can have a smooth experience, so we made a lot of adjustments, particularly with regard to HTML tags and alt text.
See below: the screen reader didn't specify that the button was the delete button, failing to communicate an irreversible potential action.
Groups feature
Our clients requested greater flexibility and functionality with the Groups feature on our platform. I worked on new methods by which instructors can create groups within their courses. I mapped out the interaction flows and edge case scenarios, working with developers to ensure the logic was structured properly. I also extended the feature to include group assignments, allowing collaborative submissions.
See below: a newly designed modal that offers four grouping methods, including new user label and email domain options.
Rubrics feature
Previously, instructors needed to create new rubrics for each assignment. This rubric management system allows instructors to reuse rubrics they've already created in other courses or import rubrics created by their institution. This saves a significant amount of time! I wrote the logic of how the rubrics would be saved, edited, and preserved correctly. Then we also created the institution side, making a new page to handle creating, copying, and deleting rubrics, and editing permission settings.
See below: a newly designed modal that allows instructors to import a rubric from any other assignment in any of their courses.
Layout templates feature
I met with one of our major clients to discuss this idea to enhance the visual depth that instructors can create for assignments or that students can create in their ePortfolios. I designed three new HTML-based content / layout templates: a quote block, sub/header divider, and an accordion menu.
See below: the rich text editor with layout template options, including the new styled h2 heading, quote block, and accordion element.
Animations!
I got assigned a fun project, to create a loading animation for the Rumi AI agent when it generates content. This visual gives the user a sense of progress for the AI generation. I created this animation in Figma, which took lots of trial and error, but I'm glad I got to play around with it. I also made another animation to better visually indicate to students that an assignment had been completed. These were both fun and challenging to experiment with.
See below: loading animation while Rumi AI generates content. The progress bar moves smoothly and various education-related quotes cycle below.
Reflection
Over two years during college, I made significant contributions to many aspects of the CN platform, lending my detail-oriented eye to many refinements, feature designs and redesigns, as well as interaction design and logic.
This internship is extremely foundational to my future UX design career because it was the first experience I had using Figma and working on a real-world product. Seeing my contributions go live on the website was a very rewarding feeling, knowing that I helped contribute to a global audience.
