Anastasia Cheetham, Software Designer, Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto Whirlwind Tour of Progress to Date

Fluid Project Goal –Improve the usability and accessibility of community open source projects with a focus on academic software for universities –Developing a library of sharable customizable user interfaces designed to improve the user experience of web applications

Participating Projects uPortal –Enterprise portal system –Aggregates personalized student information Sakai –Collaboration and learning environment –Teaching, research, and group collaboration Moodle –Learning management system –Strong focus on pedagogy Kuali Student –Upcoming, next generation student information system –Viable alternative to high-cost commercial products

Activities User Experience Walkthroughs UCamps Design Patterns Component Development

UX Walkthroughs Heuristic evaluations –examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the "heuristics") e.g “visibility of system status” Cognitive walkthrough –Identify particular tasks –focus on how easy it is for new users to accomplish tasks with the system

UX Walkthroughs uPortal Sakai Moodle

UX Walkthrough Findings Pain Points –Feedback –File management –Layout –Navigation –Preferences and Permissions –Terminology –Workflow

UCamps Workshops and collaborations about user experience design and accessibility UCamp here this afternoon

Design Patterns A pattern is a proven solution to a common problem in a specified context Review of existing Design Pattern Libraries Development of Fluid Design Patterns –Drag and Drop

Component Development Current: –Lightbox component: organize image thumbnails –Reorderer: organize anything (for example, portlets?) –NavigationTabs Next: –Reorderer in uPortal –File Uploader –Navigation Menu

Demos Lightbox NavigationTabs

Release: 0.1 this month wiki.fluidproject.org