The User-Centered Design
of York University’s Mobile
Web Presence
Peter Rowley, UIT, CANHEIT 2012
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Presented on Tuesday, June 12 2012 – comments from audience added
The User-Centered Design
of York University’s Mobile
Web Presence Experience
Peter Rowley, UIT, CANHEIT 2012
2
Tuesday June 12, 2012 – includes comments from CANHEIT audience
Agenda
•  Introduction
•  Needs Assessment (2010-11)
•  Implementation (summer 2011)
•  Overview of Service
•  Usage
•  Future
•  Lessons Learned
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Introduction
•  Why did or would you “do mobile”?
Answers from audience:
-  Keep up with trend / growing demand
-  Reputational
-  Emergency communications
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Needs Assessment
•  Based on the anticipated rapid growth of smartphone
use, UIT’s 2010-11 plan included a mobile version of the
student portal and work started in fall 2010
•  Building on the tradition of user-centered design of the
desktop student portal, we set out to assess mobile
needs, first for students
•  and later for staff
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Needs Assessment - Devices
•  Which devices do/would you want to support on your
campus?
•  Blackberry
•  iPhone
•  Android
•  Others?
Answers from audience: all of first three, no others
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Needs Assessment - Devices
•  Survey of students ran from Nov 2010 – Jan 2011
•  A total of 1000 responses
•  Reasonably representative with respect to year and
whether or not in residence
•  The impending rapid growth of smartphones was
confirmed, with 40% intending to buy a new device in
2011:
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•
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Blackberry 44%
iPhone 29%
Android 16%
Windows 7 4%
Regular phone 5%
Needs Assessment – Devices
75% visit websites on their device
78% download apps to their device
How many apps do they regularly use?
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3 or fewer
24%
4 – 10
52%
10 – 20
14%
More than 20
10%
Needs Assessment – iPhone
98% visit websites on their device
99% download apps to their device
How many apps do they regularly use?
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3 or fewer
9%
4 – 10
53%
10 – 20
21%
More than 20
17%
Android results are similar
Needs Assessment - Devices
•  Based on usage patterns, either web sites or
applications could be used to deliver required content
and tools
•  Whatever is created will require marketing to be adopted
•  As fewer apps are used, it may be harder for an app to
be adopted than a web site
•  It is also harder to develop apps (new technologies,
device-specific) and harder to distribute (app stores)
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Needs Assessment - Services
•  Which mobile services are or would be most important
for your students?
Answers from audience:
-  transit, course schedule, grades, site-wide search
-  student’s social calendar
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Needs Assessment - Services
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My class schedule
82%
Exam schedule
71%
Find a free computer in lab
38%
Moodle for my courses
67%
38%
Student account balance
55%
Library account balance,
holds, checkouts
Student portal
51%
Instructor office hours
37%
Campus maps
46%
33%
Book a library study room
46%
Hours for York retailers and
restaurants
YU card account balance
46%
Events on campus
27%
Library catalogue search
41%
My to-do list
23%
Security alerts
40%
Staff/faculty directory
21%
University news
19%
Sport York news and events
12%
Ratings are percentages of respondents
who ranked the service important or very important
Needs Assessment - Services
•  Most popular services requested in free-form comments
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Enroll in courses
Drop courses
Course timetables
Course websites
Grades
Important dates
Course book lists
Exam schedule changes
Needs Assessment - Services
•  Other requests from free-form comments
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Central e-mail
Google maps with building details and directions
Library hours
Pay fees and fines
Contact Go Safe (campus escort)
Gym hours
Live chat with student services rep
Find a computer lab
Check room codes for graduate reading room
Bookstore search
Needs Assessment - Services
•  Mobile is not just web, SMS is important too
•  Which events should generate an SMS for your
students?
Answers from audience:
-  Class cancellation, security incident
-  space open in a class, communications from other
students
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Needs Assessment - Services
Events which should generate an SMS message
Class cancellations
80%
Weather alerts (campus closing)
69%
Release of grades
67%
Release of exam schedule
64%
Security alerts
46%
Library book on hold now available
38%
Overdue tuition fees
36%
YU Card balance below $5
23%
Don’t send me anything ever
8%
Some students noted a desire to indicate which events to
receive by text message and which by e-mail
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Needs Assessment - Devices
•  Similar survey carried out for staff
•  266 responses
•  Some evidence that students participated in the staff
survey
•  Device preference is similar except:
•  iPhone 32% for staff, 27% for students
•  iPad 3% for staff, 0.4% for students
•  38% planned to buy a new device in 2011, with their
preferences reflecting more interest in iPhone and iPad
than students, as above
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Needs Assessment - Services
York e-mail
73%
Directory
64%
Campus maps
58%
Security alerts
57%
Transit info (bus, etc.)
48%
Important Dates
46%
Campus events
43%
YU Card balance
35%
University news
35%
Library catalogue
35%
Your To Do list
34%
Library account balance,
holds, etc
33%
Hours for York retail
outlets and restaurants
29%
Learning and
development
opportunities
16%
Classroom equipment
ordering
12%
Sport York news & events 12%
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Needs Assessment - Services
•  Most popular suggestions from free-form text comments
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Weather emergency
Class lists
Moodle access
Calendaring (Lotus Notes integration)
Important dates
Transit info, particularly re subway construction
Detailed campus map with room info
Needs Assessment - Services
Events that should result in an SMS message being sent
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Message
Staff requesting
Students requesting
Weather alerts
80%
69%
Security alerts
60%
46%
Library book on hold now
available
31%
38%
YU Card balance below $5
15%
23%
Don’t send me anything
ever
17%
8%
The story continues…
•  We were “just slightly ahead of our time” when a request
from the Board of Governors arrived – establish a
mobile web presence
•  The effort to add mobile access to the student portal was expanded
to include mobile-friendly versions of:
•  The home page of the main web site, www.yorku.ca
•  The captive portal login to campus WiFi
•  The login to campus single sign-on (Passport York)
•  Campus maps, directory, and events
•  Scope became the mobile experience, not just the
mobile web
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•  Fully addressing the mobile experience awaits
full deployment of 802.1x access to WiFi
Launch – Summer 2011
•  www.yorku.ca
•  Central development
•  HTML5/CSS3 with jQuery Mobile (we used beta; now at
version 1.0.1) – no native apps
•  Liferay 5.2.8 portal
•  Navigation to existing mobile-friendly sites
•  Future students (Drupal-based)
•  Library (did new development)
•  Development and sharing of mobile style guide to
coordinate cross-campus mobile web look and feel
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Overview
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Overview
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Overview
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Overview
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Usage – Visits
Average visits per day to home page
October 2011
1,100
January 2012
2,400
All of Jan 2012
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75,000
82% are return visitors
Usage – Relative to desktop
•  The proportion of usage that is mobile is growing slowly
•  For example, for the Student Portal
•  October 2011
•  8,905 out of 92,705 = 9.6%
•  January 2012
•  18,400 out of 182,800 = 9.9%
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Usage – Devices (January 2012)
Which device would you expect to be first?
Answers from audience:
-  Slight edge for Android as first
-  iPhone a close second
-  Blackberry third
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Usage – Devices (January 2012)
iPhone OS
Blackberry OS
Android
62.8%
18.1%
17.4%
iPhone breakdown: 50% iPhone 4
6.4% iPod touch
6.3% iPhone 3GS
Similar results for March 2012, with 19% Android
77% version 2.3.3
8% ver 3.1, 8% ver 4.03, 3% ver 2.1
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Blackberry usage rose in fall, slow decline now
Usage – Browsers (January 2012)
Safari
Android
Blackberry 9xxx
77.7%
16.3%
2.6%
A reasonable strategy is to develop for Safari and if the
service takes off, test on Android also
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Usage - Services
•  Due to implementation architecture, analytics services
are not counting service requests accurately
•  Multiple pages are loaded all at once
•  Results in artificially high bounce rates since needs can
be satisfied completely within the first page load
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Coordinating Across Campus
•  The initiative was an opportunity to create and sustain a
coordinated cross-campus mobile web presence
•  Basic steps toward that goal were achieved
•  A framework for future coordination was established
•  Mobile web working group
•  Cross-campus committee open to all Faculties,
administrative units, interested parties
•  Led by Marking & Communication and IT
•  Eleven areas for potential collaboration / standards
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Eleven Possible Areas of Collaboration
•  Device support
•  Implementation technologies
•  Content management
•  Appearance
•  Navigation
•  Search
•  Authentication
•  Personalization
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Eleven Possible Areas of Collaboration
•  Distribution
•  Analytics
•  Accessibility
Of all these, content management, appearance/navigation,
and analytics have, to date, generated the most interest
across campus.
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Areas of Collaboration
•  Appearance and Navigation
•  UIT and Marketing and Communication created a mobile
look and feel, initially for the student portal
•  Adapted for other central sites (main site, directory,
events, etc.)
•  Borrowed and adapted for library sites
•  Content management
•  Sharing of templates for Drupal, Wordpress, and jQuery
Mobile
•  Distribution of mobile style guide and supporting CSS file
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Areas of Collaboration
•  Analytics
•  Everyone initially used Google Analytics yet found it
wanting
•  York “best practice” became the use of both Google
Analytics and Percent Mobile
•  GA may have caught up
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Future Areas
•  Some areas have not been pursued yet, awaiting
resources
•  Search: allow mobile users to find web sites and apps by
keyword and other search (e.g. location)
•  Personalization: allow cross-site personalization, e.g. by
audience (student, staff, alumni, public), location, etc.
•  Distribution: organize the distribution of access to web
sites, particularly mobile applications
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Lessons Learned
•  There won't be a lot of traffic, at least not to start, so
discover user needs to drive impactful functionality
•  Those needs will reflect their unique situations
•  Mobile user needs are not the same as for desktop
•  Mobile web sites can be good solutions to mobile needs
•  Typical mobile architectures can complicate gathering
usage statistics
•  If you are ahead of your campus, particularly on look
and feel, you have a better chance for a cross-campus
integrated experience
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© 2011 York University | York University Mobile Web Site Style Guide
40
August 2011 Ver 1.0 | Questions? markcomm@yorku.ca
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© 2011 York University | York University Mobile Web Site Style Guide
41
August 2011 Ver 1.0 | Questions? markcomm@yorku.ca
42
Thanks!
•  Contact me
prowley@yorku.ca
•  Mobile Style Guide
www.yorku.ca/prowley/MSG.pdf
Questions?
43