Shutian Wang UX Design
The Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute (MFRI) Course Scheduling System Follow Up Project
The Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute (MFRI) was looking to improve the course scheduling system.
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MFRI is a preeminent emergency services training agency for the state of Maryland and the world
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Provides fire and general hazard and safety courses
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Based in Maryland, but students come from around the world
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Role
Product Designer
Frontend Developer
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Type
Real World Project
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Team
Nick Gaffney
Gus Henriquez -
Jong Kim
Shutian Wang
Tyler Farmer
The Problem
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The system functionally works, but the design is outdated and difficult to maintain.
Usability needs to be at the forefront of every decision due to the varying technical knowledge of the MFRI scheduling system users.
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"I am currently working part-time as an instructor at MFRI. I help to schedule courses for our students. The current scheduling system is very "old school". I am still learning how to use it." ---- James
The Goal
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The goal of the project was to update the current pages and functions of the system which are primarily written in PERL, to a more modern language Python. The updated components were to be integrated into the current Django environment, which is the web framework that MFRI is currently using for their site. Lastly, the original project goal had a cloud deployment aspect to it, where we would be migrating the system to a UMDIT run AWS instance.
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Method​
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Django Environment Debugging Document
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Most Updated Version of Django Environment
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Frontend Mockups
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Interview​
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Figma
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CSS/HTML
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Problems Encountered​
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Learning client’s style
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Our meetings can get off track relatively quickly
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The bubonic plague
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Because not everything is shared with us the client shows the code on Zoom
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Meeting notes and screenshots only do so much
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Hard to remember all of the functional intricacies after finally receiving the code
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Information overload
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We get a lot of information in the meetings we have
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Get information meant for other MFRI groups and vice versa
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Have to decide which parts we hear are the most important for our project
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Future Plan​
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If we were given more time, the main focus would clearly be to fix the issue with the backend connection and write an updated backend in Python
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If passed off to another project team, this would still be the main goal
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Django debugging document would help to see what potential solutions have been tried already to help jumpstart some new ideas for potential fixes
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Page functionality needs to be added
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Saving form submissions
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Elements such as dropdown menus filled with appropriate content
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Connecting to backend
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