International Center of Photography Education Platform

International Center of Photography (ICP) needed a new online education platform that would provide the same level of personalization, communication, and quality as attending a class in person.

roles: RESEARCH, UX DESIGN, INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

USER INTERVIEWS

• Due to budget constraints, only instructors were interviewed

• Research revealed that instructors were enthusiastic about the prospect of opening up their courses to non-local students; however, they were also concerned that it could compromise the learning experience

• Instructors expressed a desire to customize and manage their classes effectively

technical approach and architecture

• The platform was built on Drupal due to its robust security and institutional usage across ICP

• In addition, the Organic Groups module in Drupal allowed for community building options for instructors to manage their classes

• The classes had two components — live webinars and galleries that served the asynchronous portion of the course

• A number of features were built to be configurable by the instructor so that he or she could customize the content as desired

Design and OPPORTUNITY

• With a wide range of timezones students might be participating from, a“Recent Activity” feed on the home screen was proposed to provide the instructor and students a place to catch up on conversations about the course work

• Final designs incorporated ICP’s branding as well as showcased the students’ work within the Drupal framework; images could be uploaded at full resolution, opened full screen, and zoomed in on to view additional detail

• Galleries could be viewed by student, assignment, or in the Common Gallery, which served as an optional, instructor-enabled space to share inspiration and reference images or feature student works.