Q&AIMS: Designing an Information System

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CHALLENGE

MSIM students at the University of Washington lacked a formal channel to communicate with each other about their experiences in the MSIM program. For my Advanced XML class, my group members and I decided to address this issue through the creation of a question and answer service.

Goals

Document and preserve tacit knowledge about the student experience
Facilitate a communication channel between students
Reduce burden on administrative staff from answering repetitive questions

MY ROLE

Information Architect (Organized, recruited for, moderated, and analyzed both the open and closed card sorts), Visual Designer (Designed the layout to match the current AIMS site, and wrote the HTML and CSS), and Project Manager.

PROCESS

Research: gathered sample questions from users; met with stakeholders about the service's goal
Brainstormed the user interaction possibilities
Observed users in a closed and open card sort to determine the category terms
Analyzed data from the card sorts and created an information architecture
Continual communication about design decisions and development to each member of the team

RESULT

Our final deliverable was a fully working service to be integrated into the AIMS website. The website has been in use since Spring of 2009 and has over sixty posts. View the Q&AIMS site here.

Group Members: Josiah Johnson, Peiwen (Claire) Huang, Jasper Bleys, Mayuko Masudo