Pirate Port

Design Goals

Pirate Port was the community website for Whitworth University. It provided access to campus systems for students and other community members. Pirate Port aimed to optimize user experience for a variety of users.

In my user research, I interviewed Pirate Port users - including students, faculty and staff - about their user experience. I developed user personas, based on user needs that I encountered.

I designed a new app system that would optimize app usage for many users, but remain flexible to a variety of needs.

I also planned new branding for the Pirate Port app, corresponding with icons that I adopted for the new app system.

User Personas

I gathered information by interviewing users of Pirate Port. I built user personas to embody the needs of users.

Oliver

Oliver Hunt is a French teacher who runs the fantasy soccer league for the Whitworth language department. Oliver frequently communicates with his students and colleagues, using Campus Systems on Pirate Port.

I centralized notifications such as user messages within the Pirate Port interface, with a proposed single sign on system. This system would imported information from various user accounts, onto a user dashboard.

User dashboard displays notifications

Ganymede

Every semester, Ganymede Mark checks Pirate Port for the date of the final saxophone recital. Ganymede wants to get notifications from the Music Department calendar, instead of scrolling through a bunch of content on Pirate Port to find it.

I added calendar notifications to the user dashboard. I designed event interactions, which allowed users to to ‘watch’ event authors.

‘Watch’ event authors on a calendar

Branding

I repurposed the Whitworth pirate logo, restyling it and placing it on a flag background, which matched the flag icons I created for the user dashboard.

New logo celebrates school spirit