Good and Bad Design: The Good
In a previous post, I wrote about an example of Bucknell University’s poor in-app user interface, but now I think I have to give it some credit. One of the more stressful aspects that students deal with every year is getting their housing situation set for the next year. This includes but is not limited to:
- Selecting a location to live. This could mean signing up for an Affinity House, moving into a Fraternity house, participating in the housing lottery, and / or choosing who will live with you once the housing lottery is completed.
- Selecting a roommate. For people who don’t know anyone to room with, they need an online way of finding people.
- Selecting a meal plan. This typically changes with what year you are entering at Bucknell (Bostwick meal swipes as a first-year, Bison dining dollars as a sophomore and up, Fraternity meal plans if that applies to you, and the list goes on)
- Accommodation requests if that is something that you need.
- Signing room and meal plan agreements to confirm and live with the selections that you’ve made.
These things really start to pile up without thinking about it, and luckily Bucknell’s online housing portal is actually pretty neat:
All of the different sections are outlined right there in that nifty, light-blue bar. You can click on the first ‘Welcome’ bubble and then use the continue button at the bottom to progress through the whole thing. If you mess something up, you can click on any of the bubbles to jump back to whatever page you need to see again. Before you know it you’re all set to move in next fall.
I would say my only complaint, from a very nit-picky point of view, is that it seems the color of the bubble is supposed to express a meaning of some kind, but it is unclear. I can tell orange corresponds to the current section I am looking at, but gray, dark blue, and white with a blue outline all could mean a variety of things. But overall, Bucknell really knocked this one out of the park.
