Design thinking is creative problem solving that’s focused on the end-user. It begins with understanding and empathizing with users, then transitions to defining problems and pain points, ideating solutions for these problems, and prototyping and testing with users and stakeholders. This iterative process allows us to gather feedback often and eliminate any major issues with designs early — before it’s too late to turn back and before any major work and resources have gone into building the final design.
The design process occurs in iterative phases that helps the team build upon ideas quickly, test with users and stakeholders, and change approaches based on what we learn. The stages of the design (See Figure 1) include:
- Define (Discovery 2.0)
Re-engage with department stakeholders and unit directors to listen to feedback on site navigation and process improvements, understand end-user needs - Ideate, Prototype
Iterative stage of ideation and creating prototype design solutions for site pages and features - Build, Analyze
Create low-fidelity prototypes. Test with users and stakeholders and adjust design. Create hi-fidelity prototypes. Test and adjust.
Phased Approach
The team defined and proposed a phasing approach for the project.
- School of Education Senior Leadership approved the phasing approach on 7/23/19 at the Senior Leadership Retreat.
- School Chairs approved the phasing approach on 7/31/19 at the Chairs Planning Retreat.
- Phase 1 (Pilot phase)
- Main School of Education .
- One department site – Curriculum and Instruction (C&I). We will create repeatable processes which can be used to efficiently develop other department sites!
- Phase 2 – Remaining departments in Sitefinity
- Educational Policy Studies
- Rehabilitation Psychology & Special Education
- Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis
- Counseling Psychology
- Dance
- Phase 3 – Remaining units in Sitefinity to incorporate into academic department sites
- WISCAPE into ELPA
- EPTC (TBD)
- Phase 4 – Optimize sites that were already in WordPress as of July, 2019 (Art, Kinesiology, Educational Psychology, Theatre & Drama, MERIT) and migrate unit sites that were part of the original project plan (CCBC, The Network, Testing & Evaluation)