In the Summer of 2019, I got an amazing opportunity to work as an Experience Designer (Intern) at Ellucian. I worked on the Ellucian Banner product, which is an ERP system designed to strengthen every major department in higher education.
I led the redesign of Ellucian Banner Student - I owned the responsibility of the various student modules: designing the flow for a new student's enrollment at a university and the graduation application to name a few. I worked on redesigning the platform to holistically improve the learnability, visual aesthetics and the overall experience of Banner.
It was a phenomenal experience! I thoroughly enjoyed working with the UX team, developers and the Product Managers and learnt so much more than just UX design.
Interactive Prototype:
RESEARCH
Ellucian has a wonderful UX Research team, the members of which conduct both qualitative and quantitative research. The UX research team collects in-situ data in order derive insights from the research process which eventually enables designers to create beautiful and purposeful experiences. I had an opportunity to shadow this team and learnt a lot about the research methodologies used.
INSIGHTS FROM RESEARCH
• Banner's old, obsolete design provided students and faculty with functionalities that were not readily discoverable.
• The forms were poorly designed and lacked consistency.
• The interface was not very forgiving - recovering from human-errors could be very tedious and time-consuming.
• The interface as a whole was not 'pretty'.
• The forms were poorly designed and lacked consistency.
• The interface was not very forgiving - recovering from human-errors could be very tedious and time-consuming.
• The interface as a whole was not 'pretty'.
Keeping these shortcomings in mind, I first came up with user flows to simplify various processes and formulated key drivers to abide by while redesigning the dashboards.
IDEATION AND DESIGN
Brainstorming and Wireframes
Iterating designs based on Feedback:
I received constructive feedback on my designs from my Manager and the respective Product Manager. I also constantly requested feedback from my team members to improve the design. Peer reviews was a part of our team's weekly agendas, where we took turns to present our concept and design to the team and requested feedback. This greatly helped me iterate on my designs and reach the final version.
VISUAL DESIGN
The old screens look archaic and provided a poor user experience
Using Ellucian's Design System
I worked with the Ellucian Design System (EDS) to ensure that user experience is optimized for usability, usefulness and mainly, visual design. I got hands-on experience working with a design system and realized the importance of having a design system, especially when working within a team and across various platforms.
FINAL PRODUCT
Some screens from the one of the portals I redesigned.
*Since my work is NDA protected, I am not at liberty to share all the design screens. Therefore, I have excluded sensitive details and only displayed information that is relevant and instrumental in elucidating my contribution to the project.
LEARNINGS
I derive a lot of joy from fact that the product I designed was shipped! This internship reassured me that I made an impact at a large scale.
I got to learn the inner workings of an ERP system, which was extremely knowledgeable.
Working on the Banner team was a unique opportunity for me to make an impact at large scale.
I gained hands-on experience working with design systems and understood the importance of having a solid design system in order to achieve consistent design.
Collaborating with product managers, developers and also the marketing team was a great learning experience.
A sneak peak at my journey during the 12 weeks of my internship :)
