For the design and scope definition of Global State University’s (GSU) new course registration system, we interviewed stakeholders, analyzed institution documentation, and researched industry standards and best practices. During semi-structured interviews, our strategy revolved around collecting granular input from different user roles—namely undergraduate students, advisors, administrators, and IT staff.

The interviews disclosed many complaints, such as freezing systems during peak hours, lack of adaptive pages for mobile devices, minimal accessibility, and incompatibility with financial aid, degree audits, and visa compliance tools. The Disability Services Coordinator, for instance, highlighted the fact that the system does not comply with WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards, and the Financial Aid Director mentioned registration-related delays because the system lacks real-time eligibility verification. Students showed that they are stressed because they do not understand how the waitlist works and early morning registration gives them no options.

We used stakeholder mapping to ensure representation across technical, administrative, and student-facing roles. A knowledge board was developed to visualize overlaps and conflicts in needs, while the MoSCoW prioritization technique helped us distinguish between essential and desirable features. These tools, introduced in class, were instrumental in guiding design recommendations for mobile-first interfaces, API-first architecture, automated alerts, and multilingual support.

Our findings are supported by external research, including EDUCAUSE (2024), which identifies seamless, accessible student journeys as a top institutional priority, and U.S. Census data (2022), which validates the need for multi-language functionality.

References

  1. EDUCAUSE. (2024). 2025 EDUCAUSE top 10: Smoothing the student journey. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2024/10/2025-educause-top-10-3-smoothing-the-student-journey

  2. World Wide Web Consortium. (2018). Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/

  3. U.S. Census Bureau. (2022, December 6). Languages we speak in the United States. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/languages-we-speak-in-united-states.html

INFO 380 Product Management Project • Portfolio archive • Maintained by emmaphamlet