MSIS Course Offerings Redesign



A webpage redesign of the UT iSchool course offerings to improve information architecture and visual design.

Role: UX Co-designer, Co-researcher
Team: Myself and another MSIS student
Timeline: Spring 2025 (13 weeks)
Tools: Figma, Miro



The problem




 The UT iSchool offers a diverse array of courses to support students across the many disciplines of Information Science, from Library and Archive studies to User Experience and Data Analytics. However, the graduate school course offerings page was overloaded with information and lacked intuitive navigation.   This organization led to a course selection process that was consuming and disorganized. To complete my capstone requirement for the MSIS degree, another student and I redesigned the Course Offerings webpage this work to focus on elucidating our degree program.


Our solution



We transformed the Course Offerings webpage into a one-stop resource for course registration planning. Our redesign offers intuitive organization of essential course planning information, and a filtering system to facilitate the course searching process based on students’ needs and preferences.








RESEARCH
Building our case



To gain a broad understanding of MSIS students’ interests and practices for degree planning, we distributed a survey to 40 current students. From these results, we created an interview protocol and followed up with 10 respondents to further investigate their experience selecting courses. These interviews uncovered practices, pain points, and suggestions related to the webpage.

Our interviews revealed that MSIS students’ struggled to efficiently sift through prospective courses and find relevant degree information. This organization made the course registration process unnecessarily demanding and left students confused about certain elements of their degree.











We identified eight themes to describe students’ needs and practices for course selection


  1. Students were divided into two patterns of course selection: 1) exploring a wide range of classes outside of their main professional interest and 2) solely focusing on the topics relevant to their career.
  2. Flexibility to explore courses across topics was valued among most students we spoke to.
  3. Students felt like they didn’t have clarity regarding what the degree entailed, such as course sequencing, endorsements of specialization, and long-term planning.
  4. Many students relied on personal tools and external resources to plan their course registration.
  5. Peers and faculty played a valuable role as trusted sources of information to influence course selection.
  6. Students in UX and Data Science tracks prioritzed courses that offered practical application.
  7. Students expressed a desire for more visual way to explore courses by area of study.



Syllabus Analysis



Following our user research, we conducted a syllabus analysis to address our first major addition to the site: a course filtering system 

Combing through the iSchool’s extensive multidisciplinary courseload was integral to each students’ course registration process. The current Course Offerings page employed a filtering system based on degree program and area of study, but students were reluctant to use this system due to a lack of trust in the filtering mechanism and a desire to explore courses across various disciplines.

We decided to improve upon this filtering system based on the course characteristics students sought out in their selection process. Our final filters were: area of study, deliverables, and skills & topics.

To create our filters for ‘Deliverables’ and ‘Skills & Topics,’ we analyzed 120 syllabi from MSIS courses.  We developed a list of six tags to describe the course’s deliverables, and an inventory of 46 relevant skills and topics. We applied these tags to create a functional course filtering system in our final prototype.






Snapshot of syllabus analysis spreadsheet






DESIGN
Creating a design system



Our design system met the UT brand guidelines and aligned with the current style applied across the iSchool website, only deviating with the introduction of teal blue for the Skills & Topics tags.

Prototyping and user testing



From our preliminary research, we understood that MSIS students wanted greater clarification of degree requirements and easier course exploration. We addressed our research findings through the following design changes:


  1. Creating a visual aid of the MSIS degree requirements to faciliate comprehension.
  2. Improving the information architecture and navigability by organizing courses into themes through clear menus, visuals, and filters.
  3. Creating a visualization of courses by area of study for quick exploration.
  4. Developing a refined course filtering system to enhance the searching process, with clear descriptions and verified class content to increase students’ trust.
  5. Added a new course characteristic, ‘Deliverables’, to address students’ goals to prioritize or avoid courses with certain deliverables, such as a portfolio project or an exam.


Beginning with low-fi paper prototypes, we iterated on our design through three rounds of user testing. From each round, we applied A/B testing to evaluate our information architecture, usability of features, and visual design. Before arriving at our final prototype, we developed seven iterations of our design, which are shown above.



Our final design consisted of design elements from each round of testing that incorporated our users’ preferences and suggestions for improvement.

Final design




Creating a filter system




We leveraged Figma variables to create a complex filtering system where students could search for courses by the area of study, deliverables, and skills & topics. 

Courses were displayed in a table with information students deemed valuable to the registration process, including the three filters we added, course number, a linked title to the specific course’s site, a linked syllabus, and course description. We also included a searching tool for students to look up specific course information.

Layout of filter system.



To create a functional checkbox filtering system, we used Figma variables and conditional logic for the area of study filters. Below are the components we used to create the filtering system. Our final prototype included content from seven MSIS courses.
Filter variables in Figma.





Due to time constraints and limited technical expertise, we were not able to add this logic to the deliverables and skills & topics filters, instead choosing to use a happy path for our final prototype. Below is a demo of our filtering system, including both the functional logic we implemented and the happy path.

Demo of filtering system.



FINAL PROTOTYPE






Our final prototype included a complete redesign of the iSchool MSIS Course Offerings page. Our page was reconstructed into three novel sections: a graphic of the MSIS degree requirements and consolidated link centers with relevant degree information, a list of all courses organized into drop-down menus by area of study, and a filtering system to navigate these courses by three key course characteristics: area of study, deliverables, and skills & topics.  
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Future directions






Throughout our capstone semester, we met with iSchool faculty and staff to discuss the future of this project and how it can be realized on the iSchool website. Upon finishing this version of our prototype, we handed over our deliverables to the team responsible for adapting our redesign in their site rennovations. We hope to soon see our research insights and design reflected in the iSchool course offerings page.