Connect(UW)

Kartik rishi Anna kong garrett sato

A look in to how students at the University of Washington work with each other in collaborative spaces to accomplish work in their classes and how we can optimize that system.

INFO 360 FALL 2012

Backgroundtask to develop a solution to help students survive college, we quickly When presented with the
adapted a list of issues at the heart of what college students value. A key aspect of an individuals success in college is the ability for them to study the material for their courses, and to become more aware of the course content. However, after a cursory survey of students and their study patterns we discovered that many students prefer their own environment and style of studying, which is something beyond the scope of our effort. As a part of our surveys we grew a better understanding of common procedures that various kinds of students have when it comes to succeeding in a course and in particular we realized that there were issues with how students utilized class tools. This insight in to the inefcient tools provided to students drove our team to develop our design.

Design Problem

A common occurrence in student lives is the need to be able to collaborate with other students on group projects. Its a simple fact of college that working in a team is a key skill to have and is one that can lead to success in college, and life. After analyzing the responses of a small group of individuals, we realized that we needed to take another look at how we even approach the issue of collaborating with other students. Enterprise toolsets implemented by the University of Washington like Catalyst and Canvas allow students certain functionalities but truly center around navigating course content rather than enabling interaction between students. Another issue is that students dont feel the need to utilize these tools, when they nd better services elsewhere through Facebook or Google. Even if there is a system that has a lot of students uing it, how can we make the interface more straightforward and available to the user. How about maintaining the privacy of a student, or a group of students? What about making it so that content on the tool can be easily separated and managed while providing incredible robustness. The problem is, existing solutions dont answer those problems and because of that they are unsuccessful and underutilized. The essential question we asked ourselves was: How do we make collaborating between different University of Washington students easier? Although the question may seem simple, there are various aspects that we have to consider:

Our solution needs to have a low barrier-of-entry, to service the ease-of-use value of users and enable high adoption rates.

Our solution should serve as a compliment to the needs of students, rather than replace any singular existing system.

Our solution needs to be able to scale to different levels of users and provide the same level of service.

To understand how we can provide a better service than established systems, it is best to under-

stand the following: 1. What services is our user base currently exposed to? 2. What are the strengths and weaknesses associated with those individual services? 3. What are some key features they utilize? The following section looks at key competitors to what we propose to develop to gain a better understanding of how those services work and how we can implement their successes in to our solution. Two immediate services that the University of Washington subscribes to are Catalyst and its replacement, Canvas. To build on our foundation, we also are going to be exploring another enterprise service called Basecamp, a popular project management tool.

Case Study: basecamp

Basecamp is a multi-lingual project management web service created by 37Signals that offers a robust opportunity to track individual milestones, to-do lists and le management.

Strengths Basecamp is a great tool to work on several different projects at a time, and works great for hierarchies. You can set up as a single enterprise (albeit no bulk add or integration with Active Directory) and then dole out different projects with different permission levels per person. The service is comprehensive in the sense that it allows you to set up project deadlines (milestones) or have a central le repository. Each comment thread or posting of milestones can be controlled on who to notify and who is responsible for it, and individuals can stay in touch via the email notications that go out. Apparently, you can set up add-ons to Basecamp that have been created by the community to change some of the functionality of the software. Weaknesses Unfortunately, user experience was not really considered when you are a part of several projects. Its very easy to become lost about which project youre actively working on, and where your content is being posted. The lack of integration of the web service to other web services like Google Drive or Dropbox makes it difcult to commit to using Basecamp when youre actively using other services to store your les. Key Features

1. Milestones: To be able to set up actual deadlines for the projects being worked on and being able to assign that milestone to a single individual or several individuals. The person can be notied via email and then that individual milestone can have its own comment/forum thread that can be accessed via Basecamp or com mented on via email. 2. Multiple Projects: With a certain group of people, you can set up several projects that have their own scope, le center and milestones/to-do lists. 3. Time Reports: While working on a specic milestone or project, you can track the amount of time spent working which feeds in to analytics for the project administrator that shows various stats.

Case Study: Catalyst

ICatalyst is a tool utilized by the University of Washington that offers a robust set of tools aimed towards the universities and the various aspects of classes.

Strengths The biggest strength of Catalyst is the extent to which it integrates with classes and the class structure. Professors have access to creating class websites, drop boxes, grade books and discussion boards. What that offers to students is a chance to work in an integrated environment that encompasses every task that a student would need in relation to classes. On top of that Catalyst offers other tools like a survey platform and email system to give more modularity to student activities. Weaknesses Where Catalyst begins to fall short is the user interface and how users interact with the various tools available to them. For instance, the way that tools that the user is a part of is a long list that is not intuitively organized. When you attempt to use a tool, youre given a large amount of options that can lead to confusion and discourage the user from actually being a user.

Key Features 1. Class Integration: Having an end-to-end integrated solution for classes is expected in this new age of web services.

Case Study: Canvas

Canvas is a new tool that is being adopted by the University of Washington to succeed the older Catalyst platform as a learning management system.

Strengths This tool does what Catalyst did, but better. When you rst log in to Canvas you are automatically placed in the various courses that you are enrolled in. Each of these courses has a comprehensive set of tools available to each (up to the instructor to implement). A way that the Canvas trounces Catalyst is the improved aesthetics and interface, allowing a more enjoyable experience for the user. Weaknesses However as a replacement to Catalyst its interesting to see the lack of some features in Canvas, particularly the survey platform. In addition, we determined from our user surveys that interpreting how to use some features is difcult and often they nd themselves lost in the site. Key Features 1. Focus on aesthetics: The interface that users interact with is vital to the adoption of a service. 2. Auto-placement: Simply by logging in, the users are connected to the courses they are in.

SCOPE

The situation we nd ourselves in is quite unique in that we have a lot of potential best practices in how these services function, but how do we translate that to something useful for our site. Our next step is to synthesize what are some key functionalities we want to implement on our site and how then elaborate on how they fulll our key goals for our solution. After some internal discussion and comparison to some comments made in our preliminary surveys, we have established the following areas as focus points of our solution:

Integrate Third-Party Services

Reputation Based

Modular Collaborative Spaces

Prole Centric

Global Chat/Messages & Communications

Solution
Before we go analyzing the various content pieces and focuses of our web application, it is best to actually see what we imagine! The following are prototypes of what we imagine the site would look like and how things are related to each other. Take some time to understand what certain text says or how things are structured; various details will be addressed throughout this design specication. Prole Page

Class Page

Group Page

Calendar Page

File Center Page

Discussion Board Page

Members Page

Courses

My Groups

Files
?

Andy ko
informatics
Connect with

student

Connect using Facebook

89 100

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas ac eros felis, ut auctor purus. Integer scelerisque rhoncus erat ut pellenView/Submit Reviews

Insert information about bio of individual. Can be sourced from LinkedIn integration. Praesent eu libero justo, sed convallis nisl. Nulla facilisi. Donec magna metus, eleifend eget condimentum sed, malesuada quis leo. Integer eu lobortis tellus. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc dapibus interdum leo in venenatis. Pellentesque ante lectus, lobortis at rutrum in, faucibus et ligula. Ut iaculis arcu a justo egestas vel posuere augue euismod. Pellentesque tincidunt molestie rutrum. Curabitur eleifend arcu eu tortor ultrices nec lobortis lectus iaculis. Ut purus nisl, pharetra quis scelerisque iaculis, condimentum vel libero. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Curabitur ante dolor, pharetra ac facilisis ut, commodo a felis. Proin lacus justo, pulvinar elementum congue quis, consectetur et elit. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Phasellus et congue lacus. Sed sit amet nibh eu neque tristique volutpat. Suspendisse potenti. In ut lacus magna, ac consequat risus. Aliquam erat volutpat. Donec sed lectus velit, sollicitudin sagittis risus. Mauris tristique faucibus tempor. Mauris ultrices fermentum eleifend. Donec erat lacus, vehicula quis pharetra nec, euismod at nibh. Suspendisse accumsan turpis sed

Active Courses INFO 444 INFO 424 INFO 360

Past Courses INFO 200 CSE 373 CSE 154 COM 220

Prole Page

Courses Home Members

My Groups

Files section a Professor andy ko

?

INFO 360

Discussions Calendar File Center

Course Description: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas ac eros felis, ut auctor purus. Integer scelerisque rhoncus erat ut pellentesque. In nec libero congue arcu viverra ultricies sed a quam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas ac eros felis, ut auctor purus. Integer scelerisque rhoncus erat ut pellentesque. In nec libero congue arcu viverra ultricies sed a quam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas ac eros felis, ut auctor purus. Integer scelerisque rhoncus erat ut pellentesque. In nec libero congue arcu viverra ultricies sed a quam.

Recent files
Homework 5.docx Dubois 1890.pdf Seattle Sounders.png The Avengers.avi

upcoming assignments
October
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

whos online

1 7 14 21 28 8 15 22 29

2 9 16

3 10 17 24 31

4 11 18 25

5 12 19 26

6 13 20 27

23
30

Study Group Homework 5 Reading 6

OVERDUE 10/25 10/31

Upload File

Click to Chat!

Class Page | Group Page

Courses Home Members Discussions Calendar File Center My Groups Files
?

Group Updates: User 1: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. User 2: Maecenas ac eros felis, ut auctor purus. Integer scelerisque User 3: Rhoncus erat ut pellentesque. In nec libero congue arcu viverra User 1: Sed a quam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Post Update

Group Name

whos online

Recent files
Homework 5.docx Dubois 1890.pdf Seattle Sounders.png The Avengers.avi

upcoming assignments
October
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 7 14 21 28 8 15 22 29

2 9 16

3 10 17 24 31

4 11 18 25

5 12 19 26

6 13 20 27

23
30

Study Group Homework 5

OVERDUE 10/25 10/31

Next Meeting
Click to Chat!

Wednesday 10:00AM-10:30AM (4) Friday 2:00PM-4:30PM (3) Friday 3:45PM-4:30PM (4)

Upload File

Courses Home Members

My Groups

Files section a Professor andy ko

?

INFO 360

Discussions Calendar File Center

Course Description: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas ac eros felis, ut auctor purus. Integer scelerisque rhoncus erat ut pellentesque. In nec libero congue arcu viverra ultricies sed a quam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas ac eros felis, ut auctor purus. Integer scelerisque rhoncus erat ut pellentesque. In nec libero congue arcu viverra ultricies sed a quam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas ac eros felis, ut auctor purus. Integer scelerisque rhoncus erat ut pellentesque. In nec libero congue arcu viverra ultricies sed a quam.

Recent files
Homework 5.docx Dubois 1890.pdf Seattle Sounders.png The Avengers.avi

upcoming assignments
October
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

whos online

1 7 14 21 28 8 15 22 29

2 9 16

3 10 17 24 31

4 11 18 25

5 12 19 26

6 13 20 27

23
30

Study Group Homework 5 Reading 6

OVERDUE 10/25 10/31

Upload File

Click to Chat!

Class Page | Group Page

Courses Home Members Discussions Calendar File Center My Groups Files
?

Group Updates: User 1: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. User 2: Maecenas ac eros felis, ut auctor purus. Integer scelerisque User 3: Rhoncus erat ut pellentesque. In nec libero congue arcu viverra User 1: Sed a quam. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Post Update

Group Name

whos online

Recent files
Homework 5.docx Dubois 1890.pdf Seattle Sounders.png The Avengers.avi

upcoming assignments
October
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 7 14 21 28 8 15 22 29

2 9 16

3 10 17 24 31

4 11 18 25

5 12 19 26

6 13 20 27

23
30

Study Group Homework 5

OVERDUE 10/25 10/31

Next Meeting
Click to Chat!

Wednesday 10:00AM-10:30AM (4) Friday 2:00PM-4:30PM (3) Friday 3:45PM-4:30PM (4)

Upload File

Courses Home Members

My Groups

Files
?

Discussions Calendar File Center

Members
First Last First Last First Last First Last First Last First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

First Last

Members Page | Discussions

Courses Home Members Discussions Calendar File Center My Groups Files
?

Discussions
Add Forum

Homework
Thread 1 Thread 2 Thread 3 Thread 4 Thread 5 Thread 6 Thread 7 Thread 8 Thread 9 Thread 10 Thread 11 Thread 12

Class Topics
Thread 1 Thread 2 Thread 3 Thread 4 Thread 5 Thread 6 Thread 7 Thread 8 Thread 9 Thread 10 Thread 11 Thread 12

Test/Projects
Thread 1 Thread 2 Thread 3 Thread 4 Thread 5 Thread 6 Thread 7 Thread 8 Thread 9 Thread 10 Thread 11 Thread 12

Courses Home Members

My Groups

Files
?

Discussions Calendar File Center

Calendar
Day Week Month Year Calendar 1 Calendar 2 INFO 444 INFO 360 INFO 424

Calendar | File Center

Courses Home Members Discussions Calendar File Center My Groups Files
?

File Center
Info 444
Folder 1 Folder 2 Folder 3 File 1 File 2

Info 444
File 1 File 2 File 3 File 4 File 5 File 6 File 7 File 8 File 9 File 10

Folder 1 > Folder 1a >

INFO 360
Folder 1 Folder 2 Folder 3 File 1 File 2

INFO 424
Folder 1 Folder 2 Folder 3 File 1 File 2

Personal
Folder 1 Folder 2 Folder 3 File 1 File 2

#109F49

#953192

#DA552D

#BB1E49

#0199AA Fonts Used Bebas Neue Arial Regular Arial Bold

#D1D2D4

#4B85C5

#5C489D

The purpose of this focus is to service our goal of eliminating the barrier of entry for our site and to help serve as a compliment to the processes students have already established. We understand that in order for collaboration to work, we need an active group of students to drive usage and help to pull in more users. However, we also understand that students already have methodologies for accomplishing tasks, for instance if you want to share les you use services like Google Drive or Dropbox, but if you want to know who someone is, you nd their information from Facebook or LinkedIn. Our focus of content/service integration is to leverage the services that students already use, and provide our solution as the overarching system to access all those services, with a focus on class collaboration. However, we also have to remember our goal of our solution having a low barrier of entry. Therefore, an aspect of our solution is that for bare minimum service, all we should require is a single sign on. We plan to leave it to the user to choose to integrate the following services as they see t. MyUW (required) MyUW is integral to the functionality of our web application and serves two purposes: user authentication & space generation. This UW service serves as the common string between our user base and will allow us to develop an user base consisting of uniquely identied individuals that are specically UW students. The second role that MyUW authentication allows us is the ability to pull information from the Student Database after the initial login and automatically generate class spaces specic to the class quarter, section and professor. By performing this task automatically, it allows our users to enter the site and access all basic functionality as easily as if they were to log in to pay their tuition or register for classes.

Content/service integration

Facebook Everyone wants to know what their friends are up to, no? Well we are here to service that need, but more in the sense that we want to help students connect with their other classmates, on our site. By integrating with Facebook, you gain the capacity to import content like prole pictures and the ability go straight from prole pages of other individuals to their Facebook proles which are populated with more content. LinkedIn We understand that some students see themselves as assets with certain skill sets, and we want to facilitate an integration with their LinkedIn proles to help pull over summary biographies and skills/expertise to help populate their own prole pages automatically. Naturally, if a student nds themselves interested in develop professional connections with other students, we can facilitate the connecting of the two individuals by integrating that feature straight in to our site. Google Drive/Dropbox/SkyDrive Although these are three very different services, they cater to the same primary functionality: hosting of personal les in the cloud. We do provide students the capacity to store their own les on our site, but some value the integration with their already established systems to not only download les but to help share les between different individuals. For certain services like Google Drive and SkyDrive, we plan to implement the collaborative web-based le editing. Google Calendar A huge aspect of any proper team dynamic is the scheduling of meetings and resources, and thats something we plan to fulll! Primarily we want the capacity for individuals to sync items between class calendars & milestones with items in their own calendar, to gain insights in to how they can schedule with class calendars. To take it a step beyond that, individuals can compare their calendars with each other to see when they can meet and establish internal reminders/milestones that can serve as benchmarks for team goals. A nifty feature we also plan to implement through calendar integration is for the site to automatically populate private group pages with possible times that meetings can occur and the amount of people that can possible attend.

Reputation system
Our web application utilizes a reputation system in several areas to improve functionality and to help keep things organic. The primary utilization of the reputation system is to develop a metric on how a certain student compares to other students. Through a combination of factors like site utilization, positive/negative peer reviews and grades, we develop a score out of 100 on how a certain individual stacks up against others. In particular, peer reviews (anonymous or not) provide a greater insight in to who a particular student is and can help guide other students on who have to work with them. A key aspect of our site is that it is limited to students only, no professors and no teacher assistants. We have learned that without the burden of authority over

-looking a student, said student is far more effective in achieving new and innovative solutions to their own work. However, in order to approach how we plan to manage each class, we intend to establish the top three individuals in terms of reputation score as moderators for each class. These moderators are given the capacity to manage class space content and structure, and serve a role in driving the class to be successful. Naturally if a moderator is unable to do their duties or conicts arise, site administrators can manually change anything on the site.

Profile Centric
The focus behind a prole-centric solution was to answer some the core ambiguities when it came to working in teams or even just other classmates: Who am I working with? We needed a way to establish the credentials of individuals that provided information on who they were, what they are knowledgeable on and whether they exhibited qualities of an individual that a typical student would want to work with. Who are they? As you can see on the prole page, a large portion of the content on the screen is populated by information that helps to identify an individual. We clearly prioritize the name and picture of the individual by placing it in the top-left section, including information on what major they were in. The content section just below it is a customizable space for an individual to write about the type of person they are and include details on skills that they have. The user can automatically populate this area by connecting their ConnectUW account with their LinkedIn account and sync information they have already supplied there. By having the account linked, ConnectUW will keep that area up-to-date over time, so the user doesnt have to. What are they knowledgeable on? The bottom portion of our prole page has space to give users to qualify their knowledge by listing their classes in two sections: active courses & past courses. This space is populated each time that the user logs in to their ConnectUW account by interfacing with the Student Database (SDB) with their MyUW credentials. ConnectUW pulls the most up-to-date information on the courses the user has or is involved in and automatically generates those spaces and adds the user in to them. When the user that is in those classes is viewing the prole page, clicking the course name will forward them to the specic class page for that course. If someone is visiting another persons prole, clicking the course name will forward them on to the University of Washingtons course description page. What kind of person are they? The last focus of the prole page is a very prominent set of numbers in the top-right corner, followed by a short block of text immediately to the right of it. Our focus of this section is to create a space where a specic user is quantied on a standarized scoring system and then easily viewed by visitors to this persons prole page. By having a quick glance, a visitor can quickly know the value of the individual being viewed in a short few seconds, but if they were interested further they can turn to the short block of text nearby to see how that score is comp-

prising of information that helped to make that score. On the initial prole page, a limited amount of reviews are actually visible, however by clicking View/Submit Reviews the user is then presented with a page overlay that includes an expanded list of user reviews followed by a space to compose a new one. In order to promote the usage of this system we allow individuals to post anonymous reviews that preserve user privacy with the tradeoff that the reviews have less weight on the reputation score and can be challenged through site administrators (in events of spam). We also included several other key aspects of a prole page that should be laid out. Under the reputation score area, we have a button that brings up a message overlay that can initiate a conversation with that user. The user also has a choice to connect their accounts with Facebook which provides another avenue for populating prole page items like the description area and the prole page.

Global communications
A comprehensive communication system is incredibly integral to any site that deals with users interacting with each other. We took it to heart to have multiple methods of having users contact one another by inserting the functionality in several places of our design. Chat What we focused on delivering for chat is an instant messaging system that can dynamically change easily depending on what the user wanted to accomplish. For beginners all chat and message notications are centralized throughout ConnectUW via the people icon in the top taskbar which will glow a random color and a number notication signifying the amount of notifcations to be acknowledged by the user. The actual chat can be initiated primarily by clicking on the picture of the individual on the members page or the Whos Online module. Once the picture or name is clicked, an overlay appears with a chat history window and space to compose your chat. A message can also be engaged when visiting the prole page for an individual. A key feature of the chat system is the ability to easily individuals by typing their name in the invite box (which will prioritize individuals in your active classes before presenting them) and then adding them to the chat to take it from two-person chat to multi-person chat. The individual that creates the invite is also given control on whether the invited user stays in the chat. Messages Messages allow more static communication to occur, particularly where a person is not online and where you would normally send a chat, you are given a message prompt. The key difference between messages and chats are that messages allow the attachment of les of calendar events (i.e. milestones) to the message and send that. Due to this, the difference between messages and chats is minimal and therefore they can share the same notication center on ConnectUW. For individuals that have their Facebook accounts linked, they can receive notications of messages straight to their Facebook page (to promote the return of users to ConnectUW).

Collaboration space

The collaboration spaces are the true meat to our solution, and without it our site doesnt have a purpose. As mentioned earlier, spaces are automatically generated for each course over each section for every quarter that the course exists, and students are automatically populated in to those course spaces through the use of SDB (only users of the site will show up on ConnectUW). Each space has the same content areas so that the services are similar between all the classes and eliminating the need for the user to have to re-learn how things are arranged. The same services are arranged in the private group pages, to also promote consistency. The following sections are breakdowns of individual aspects of the collaboration space. Homepage We also decided to make these spaces modular. While there will be a default layout for each collaborative space, we will allow the moderators to create discussion widgets any topic that they see relevant. The discussion widgets will serve as a space for users to post anything related to the topic. Therefore, all posts within the Homework labeled widget must be about homework. These can also be rearranged on the layout as the moderators see t. This will allow the users to customize their content, but only if they want to, ringing true to the idea that this service must be championed on convenience. Members Along the lines of modularity, the member and calendar sections are vital for friend exploration and study group forming. As the users try to join other study groups that have formed on their calendar or try to form their own, the calendar section will be vital for people to really work around each others schedule to nd the time to meet. Once the time has been decided, the member section allows the user to drag his classmates into a special subgroup icon. Once the user is done adding members and presses the button to nish, he will have already formed a study group. It is a quick and simple solution to their needs. Calendar The goal for the calendar functionality on the site revolves around the premise of making sure students are aware of their deadlines. It starts off with the ability to have multiple calendar depending on what class youre in or groups you are a part of. In addition, you have the option of having an active sync to Google Calendar to have access to your external calendar. Based on this data, you can manage when your deadlines on homework/exams are and be able to create new events easily. Another functionality that exists in the private group pages is the ability for ConnectUW to compare available times between all group members and suggest times that people are available to meet with each other (giving preference to having meetings with all people).

Discussion Board From there, having a discussion board and a le center is vital for those who dislike working in study groups in person or for people to catch up between study sessions. The discussion board will allow them to communicate about their thoughts, concerns, and advice about academic related material. The le center will allow them to share resource between each other. Since these collaborative spaces a are centered around a single class, they will be quick and relevant to the problems you are trying to solve. This is something we hope to embody within the entire scope of our project. There is nothing better than something is that painless to use. File Center The le center has a fairly straightforward process, it exists to keep les organized and available for individuals. For the global le center, it splits the le center in to pools of les based on the course or group and then allows individuals to have les and folders within that space. When browsing a specic class/group, you are limited in scope to just that space. The user also has the capacity to link their accounts to Google Drive or Dropbox to be able to import les from those services, or export les from the ConnectUW le center to those services.

USER Impact & Design revisions

After developing an increased knowledge on what our product is, you may be wondering whether or not we began with such an awesome product. While we did utilize user research testing in to our design process its impact relative to our own experienced decisions was less than expected. The user we designed around was an average University of Washington student that has class work that requires them to interact with other students. Every student at some point ts that denition, but in order to test our designs we decided to survey students in the Informatics major, who typically have to work with other students quite often and therefore can develop a better opinion on what features are relevant to a collaboration tool. Our initial effort was to develop a tool around connecting students to other students for study groups, however, after some semi-structured interviews on study patterns and what tools they currently use. After that initial set of interviews we quickly revised our design problem and started down the path for development of ConnectUW, focusing on student-to-student collaboration. After our initial design prototypes we worked with trusted individuals in our INFO 360 course to pour through and see where we could improve our design, and ultimately implementing it. We also utilized a 10-step heuristic evaluation to streamline our design and make it more useful for our users.

Conclusion
To conlude the design specication we simply say that ConnectUW is an opportunity to really shift the paradigm on creating new services by implementing the best features of its competitors and working in tandem to the trends that users already exhibit.