Canvas Redesign
UX Design
Duration
3 Months
Tools
Figma
Adobe Illustrator
OptimalSort
My Roles
UX Researcher
Interaction Designer
Visual Designer
Project Type
Personal Project
Canvas is a digital platform used by students and professors for assignment submission, document sharing, and many other purposes. It provides a convenient platform for students and professor to communicate and also assists in managing class documents. This project is dedicated to helping student users enhance their user experience.
For student users of Canvas, they need a simple and helpful tool to submit their assignments correctly because they don’t want to lose any points as a result of missing important assignment or class information. However, the current design of this platform often fails to meet the needs of students in art schools.
In order to get a clear picture of how students really feel about using Canvas, I interviewed five student users to get a detailed understanding, tapping into their specific pain points. Based on the results of the interviews, I compiled a list of common grievances among the participants.
In order to design a persona for the next step, I had to analyze and participants’ frustration and find what they have in common.
During the process, I realized that since canvas is a platform that contains a lot of information, the complex structure of the information makes it so that users may not be able to quickly find the information they need, which leads to being a great source of frustration for them.
Based on the above research, I identified the user group for this design project as art school student who face multiple tasks.
Guided by the insights from user interviews and empathetic analysis, I identified a few enhancements for the platform. These included integrating a Google Drive and Zoom page, making the Calendar page more accessible, and redesigning the assignment overview page with the goal of providing easier access for frequent actions.
As mentioned before, the unorganized information of Canvas indirectly cause many problems among students. In addition, I decided to add new features to it.
Therefore, I needed to reorganize the structure of this platform. I conducted a card sorting event, selecting and extracting 30 key features of Canvas and presenting them in the form of dispersed cards to five participants. They were allowed to group the cards according to their own understanding. In the end, it was possible to calculate the probability of different cards being grouped together: the more people thought that two cards should be put together, the higher the percentage shown in the chart. I then used this data to rearrange the structure and grouping of the different features.
Based on the results of the card sorting, I built a new information architecture, including new added features.
Through the usability testing platform, I quickly built a textual information architecture. Then, I took it as a prototype, and designed several tasks for the participants to test the usability of the new version. Based on the results of their behaviors and percentage of successes, indirect successes, or failures, I further analyzed and optimized the product structure. Most of the results performed well.
According to the failed results of the usability test, I created a new use flow based on the refined the Information Architecture, such as adding more access to check the grades for a course and indicating through the use flow.
Meanwhile, in addition to the changes to the visual elements, other major changes to the interface included changes to several key interfaces.
I repositioned frequently used buttons (such as 'Submit Assignments,' 'View Grades,' and 'View Announcements') to more prominent locations on each course card.
I introduced convenient shortcuts for submitting and viewing assignments alongside each entry on the assignment list page. Additionally, I embedded assignment-related PowerPoint presentations directly within the assignment descriptions, eliminating the need to navigate to a new page.
I streamlined the course files page by consolidating multiple links to various types of file storage into a single entry. This approach not only simplified access but also maintained the diverse range of information in a more organized and user-friendly manner.
