UX Research, Web App, Interaction Design
UX Revamp of RIT's Event Management System
Overview
The RIT EMS is the university’s centralized easy-to-use room and event reservation portal. Faculty, staff, and students can search for available spaces for studying and recreation. As a part of coursework for our class HCIN620: Information and Interaction Design, we set out to redesign the portal.
Our research revealed that while the portal got the job done, it had many issues that made the user experience clunky and inefficient. We redesigned the portal to improve the overall user experience by giving it a sleek and modern look, while making it faster and easier to use.
Research
We asked 5 RIT students to walk us through the booking flow to find the friction points. We also talked to the IT team at RIT to understand how the system works. The activity helped us uncover user issues, while understanding the technical limitations that we need to keep in mind while redesigning. Additionally, we conducted an industry audit of booking portals in the industry to understand the best design patterns, and user flows.
1. Inefficient task flow
The user flows were inefficient, making users jump back and forth between steps. Example: If users selected time slot of >1hr for study rooms, the error appeared after users have completed all the steps.
2. Difficulty finding information
The information was fragmented on pages. The My Events page included two tabs which showed different information to the user. Editing events required users to navigate through multiple steps.
3. Outdated and clunky UI
The visual design was outdated and clunky, making it difficult for users to navigate the interface.
Redesign Approach
We focused on streamlining and making each user flow - booking, editing and cancellation - intuitive by removing irrelevant patterns and reducing unnecessary steps.
1. Simple navigation
We simplified the navigation by making the user flow linear and intuitive. We frontloaded the filters to allow users to set their preferences before viewing available facilities. We eliminated error prone steps by restricting user choices based on previous selections.
2. Reduced redundant steps
We made the user experience cohesive by removing unnecessary steps and integrating related actions. For example, user had to select a "facility type" before being able to book a room even if there was only one default option to select. We simplified this by asking users to select the facility type only if there were multiple options available, based on the user's previous selections.
3. Intuitive UI
- We defined a hierarchy for visual elements, established one primary button and other buttons were made secondary or tertiary and avoided wherever it was possible.
- Combined fragmented elements like calendar and edit booking options that were distributed across tabs on the “My Bookings” page.
- Modern design by aligning with RIT’s website design language to provide a coherent experience.
Final Designs
1. Intuitive Booking Interface
The current interface was slow and unintuitive to use as user had to change the start and end time from dropdown every time they want a different time and click on the facility name to make selection. We redesigned it in a grid format where users can click a cell to select the facility under a specific time.
One trade-off we had to make when redesigning this was flexibility- while a clunky interface, the current UI lets users select times in 15,30,45 mins increments and can start and end at such times. Our redesigned UI will only allow users to select times in whole numbers and 1 hour slot.
2. Organized information
We combined the information from reservations and bookings tabs into a single page to provide all the details to the users at one place. This included adding a cohesive calendar and easy to find edit booking options that were distributed across tabs on the page. Editing and canceling the reservations was also intuitive and straightforward.
3. Simple landing experience with improved navigation
We designed a visually refreshing homepage to give users a starting point by presenting "New Reservation" and "My Bookings" as the action buttons. The homepage also presents information the type of facility students can book through the portal.
Outcome
I ran the System Usability Scale with the same four participants who'd used the original portal — same task, same setup, different system. Scores moved from roughly 52 (below average) to roughly 68 (above the average threshold), a directional +30% improvement. It wasn't one big change — a lot of smaller fixes added up.
Reflections
If I did this again, I'd track task completion rates and time-on-task during the diagnostic phase, not just perceived usability through the SUS — a harder before/after story to work with. The filter categories were based on my own assumptions about how students think about spaces; a card sort would've told me whether I got that right. I skipped it to move faster — probably a mistake.