- Macquarie University -

Student & Staff Portals

About the client

Macquarie University was established in 1964 as a bold experiment in higher education to break away from the traditional, to be progressive and transformational. It is now recognised internationally and consistently ranked in the top two percent of universities in the world and within the top 10 in Australia. 

Their research is leading the way in ground breaking discoveries and their academics are at the forefront of innovation tackling some of the biggest issues of our time.

Understanding the project

Project overview

Macquarie University wanted to be different to all the other universities in Australia, they didn't want to have an app out of the box, they wanted to break traditions and progress to something better for their staff and students. They always wanted an app but never knew the best time to create one nor had the experience to build one. So, they approached Empirical Works (the company I worked for at the time) to help guide them through their first custom mobile app. 

When Macquarie University approached us they were in the progress of building a new website and were mainly focused on the student and staff portals. They believed this was a great opportunity to bring some of the capabilities to mobile to help the students and staff with their lives on campus. 

This was a big experiment for Macquarie University and their brand as well as a big learning curve to help them understand the best practises of a mobile project.

2

Project Managers

1

Product Designer

5

Software Engineers

2

Project Managers

My individual contribution

Working for Empirical Works I was the only user digital designer on the project. I worked closely with the marketing / website team that were leading the new student and staff portal projects. This included openly discussing my ideas with questioning senior stakeholders, working along side a user experience researcher and project managers. 

One of my key responsibilities was to work with the Macquarie University brand that has never been adapted to mobile. They wanted me to use their style guide but push it to a new area. My other tasks were to evaluate and understand the new website designs, understand their unique staff and student personas and view other UX research they had prepared.

Once I understood Macquarie University I compared my research to their scope and designed a product based on a list of features they wanted and what was capable in the limited amount of time before they wanted to launch. I completed all the work from site maps to wireframes to adapting their brand for mobile, to finally conducting user tests of the app with students to make sure they could intuitively use the app.

Research
Interaction design
Visual design & branding
Product thinking
- Chapter 01 -

Research

Research for Macquarie University

Working with Macquarie University was fantastic, as they had a detailed brand guideline document, dedicated team for UX research and a newly completed website design for the student and staff portals. I had to go through a fast amount of documents to understand who I am designing for as well as what the mobile product will be based from.

Understanding the Brand

The University has a very complex and powerful brand that is generous, open, audacious and engaged with the wider world. It’s aim is to communicate to the world that academics from Macquarie University are thought leaders and to inspire them in a nurturing culture to be encouraged and inspired to break free from conventions. 

 Just like their foundations the brand is constantly evolving but has never been adapted to a mobile environment, so this was an excited prospect that I get to shape their mobile presence.

Understanding the new student and staff website portals

Macquarie University just finished designing the new student and staff portals and wanted some of its key features to be resigned for the new mobile app. I needed to  understand how the new interface worked without being able to use it as it didn’t exist at this point. From the limited designs and functional spec I had to take apart the features and analyse how they should work so that both products would be inline and work seamlessly together.

- Chapter 02 -

Low Fidelity Interactions

Understanding the new student and staff website portals

Macquarie University just finished designing the new student and staff portals and wanted some of its key features to be resigned for the new mobile app. I needed to  understand how the new interface worked without being able to use it as it didn’t exist at this point. From the limited designs and functional spec I had to take apart the features and analyse how they should work so that both products would be inline and work seamlessly together.

Wireframes

From understanding the main flows of the new website and analysing the needs of the student and staff research as well meeting the needs of the marketing team I created a solid structure. Due to some of the technology not being ready on time the wires were in more detail to the final design. For example the maps, search and staff directory ended up being in app browsers.

- Chapter 03 -

High Fidelity Interactions

Macquarie University

Student, Staff and Visitor app

Helping staff and students with their busy life on campus.

Campus guide (home page)

Campus guide gives staff and students quicklinks to relevant tools and information that is important to the user. As well as personalised news and events to keep the user engaged with what is happening around the Macquarie University campus.

Search the Macquarie University Website

This allows students, staff and visitors to easily search anything on the MQU website, even on the move! The app remembers the users most recent searches for them to quickly look up it again.

Student Calendar

This is a fantastic tool that allows students to keep up to date with their busy lives while studying at Macquarie University. It displays the students tutorials and lectures as well as important events that are happening on the MQU campus. Users can tap into any event to find out more information about it.

Notifications

Messages are sent out to student and staff about anything exciting that is happening around the campus or if any of their academics are working on something extraordinary. It's also a tool to send warnings for anything potentially dangerous that is happening around campus. Future versions will allows staff members to send messages to students, so this was just setting up the foundations.

More

From this screen students, staff and visitors can access a range of different screens. They can view and update their profile, enable or disable access to the emergency SMS alerts, view special links from MQU (in the future it will be other MQU apps), and students can access their checklist which is a list of things they have to do before graduating MQU.

Other Screens

Splash
Welcome Screen
On-boarding
Sign in
Sign in (Keyboard)
First time usage card 1
System access
First time usage card 2
Campus Guide (home)
Campus (scrolled)
News Article
Quicklink (in-app-browser)
Search Landing Page
Search Opened
Calendar (Schedule)
Calendar (Date Selector)
Calendar (Day)
Calendar (Week)
Event
Notifications
Message screen
More
Profile Details
Macquarie Uni Links
Richard Powell
Web Project Director - Macquarie University

“ Robbie was both a talented designer and excellent at managing the customer relationship. As Robbie's customer for a custom mobile app design, I was delighted with his work understanding our requirements, understanding our customers, working with the user experience expert on my team, understanding and leveraging the pre-existing information available for the design, and leading design reviews with challenging senior stakeholders.

I was happy with Robbie's work at all stages of the design work, which he performed with minimal oversight. “