Revamping Carleton Central: Modernizing the Student Experience

Short Description

Redesigned and developed a modern, user-friendly version of Carleton University’s Carleton Central, improving accessibility, usability, and functionality for students.

Inspiration

Carleton Central, the official student portal, is essential for academic management but struggles with outdated UX/UI and limited accessibility. Our goal was to create a streamlined and intuitive platform that empowers students to manage academics effectively, enhancing their overall experience.

What It Does

Our revamped Carleton Central platform:

• Simplifies user tasks such as course registration, grade viewing, and financial tracking.
  
• Enhances accessibility with an inclusive design for all users.
  
• Implements a responsive UI, ensuring seamless navigation on both desktop and mobile devices.
  
• Introduces intuitive workflows to make interacting with the portal frictionless and efficient.
  

How We Built It

• Front-end: Designed a modern UI using React.js, ensuring responsive layouts and dynamic user interaction.
  
• Back-end: Implemented robust functionality with Express.js and Node.js, integrating the portal's core features.
  
• Database: Used MongoDB to create a scalable and efficient data model for student records, course data, and user profiles.
  
• Collaboration: Leveraged GitHub for version control, ensuring seamless teamwork and delivery.
  
• Focused on design accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1) to ensure compliance and usability.
  

Challenges We Faced

• Designing around legacy system limitations and ensuring smooth integrations.
  
• Balancing accessibility with a modernized design, ensuring every feature was inclusive.
  
• Implementing a responsive layout that worked seamlessly across all devices within a tight timeframe.

Accomplishments We’re Proud Of

• Successfully delivered an accessible and modern UI with enhanced features, transforming student interactions with Carleton Central.
  
• Improved page load times and responsiveness by optimizing workflows.
  
• Created a platform that closely reflects the needs and feedback of the student community.
  

What We Learned

• The importance of design accessibility and how inclusive UX makes a significant impact.
  
• Effective teamwork and communication using platforms like GitHub under tight deadlines.
  
• Optimizing back-end development for streamlined data handling and dynamic requests.
  

What’s Next for Carleton Central Revamp

• Add advanced search and recommendation systems to improve user efficiency.
  
• Integrate with third-party apps for seamless notifications and calendar synchronization.
  
• Solicit further feedback from the Carleton student community to iterate and improve.
  

Built With

• and-user-experience-with-modern-responsive-design.
• dockerfilerevamped-carleton-university's-central-portal-to-enhance-accessibility
• html
• javascript
• mermaid
• scss
• typescript
• usability