WebCT application redesign
WebCT, for Web Course Tools, was a powerful course development system offering
over 40 tools to the course designer or instructor. It merged with
Blackboard in 2006. For our 3.0 release, we
set out to provide an interface that would make this complex and sprawling
software understandable to the user without extensive training.
The most challenging aspect of WebCT's redesign was probably articulating the
difference between navigation through a course, which users of the software create,
and navigation through the course tools which comprise the actual software.
Previous versions of WebCT included a site map, but this showed only the organization
of tools established by a course designer. When I first suggested that we might need
two orthogonal maps, one showing the course organization and another showing designer
functionality, the idea seemed almost bizarre. We got used to it, and the designer
map was widely praised as one of the best features in the release. It's a quick
reference card with hyperlinks. Why doesn't all software ship with a screen
like this?