Navigating MyMadison: A Critical Look at James Madison University's Online Portal
For any student of James Madison University, MyMadison, the online student portal for everything from checking schedules to managing scholarships, becomes a clear staple in everyday life. The site has its flaws, but remains largely functional and sees a dedicated team of officials work to make the site as easy and appealing to use as possible. The site is neatly organized with information never fully hidden, all buttons do as they're supposed to, and the site remains memorable enough to remember the ins and outs of use even after some time has passed since last log on. These praises, of course, only apply to the desktop version of the site, since for everything the desktop version manages to succeed in, the mobile MyMadison portal spectacularly fails at. This article will explore the strengths and weaknesses of both the desktop and mobile versions of MyMadison, with a particular focus on the shortcomings of the mobile platform.
MyMadison Desktop: A Functional Foundation
The desktop version of MyMadison generally receives positive feedback. Its organized layout ensures that information is readily accessible. Buttons function as expected, and the site's design is memorable, allowing users to navigate it effectively even after periods of inactivity. This functionality is crucial for students who rely on the portal for essential tasks related to their academic and financial lives.
MyMadison Mobile: A Troubled Transition
The mobile version of MyMadison presents a stark contrast to its desktop counterpart. While the intention to provide on-the-go access to essential university resources is commendable, the execution falls short due to a combination of confusing design choices, poor functionality, and frustrating performance issues.
First Impressions: Home Screen Hurdles
Logging onto the mobile site is the same as logging onto the desktop site, using whatever log in method JMU is currently championing. The mobile home screen is also not terrible, nothing seems overly confusing or unappealing. Of course there are a few issues in this screen, namely large number of choices that could definitely be cut down, as there is no reason searching for classes and enrolling for classes could not be grouped together as they are in the desktop site. Additionally, the graphic for password management is slightly confusing, but it is distinct enough for it to be solely remembers as the icon for password management, a problem not solved by the reuse of icons needed for To Do List and Official Final Grades, two very different portals. If icons are supposed to help the seeing impaired choose the right options, then reusing the pencil and paper icon twice for unrelated hyperlinks sorely interferes with that objective. A more major problem not readily seen is the upper right-hand corner, where the same icon of three lines is seen twice. What does the second three lines do?
The Perils of Loading
The loading times are one of the worst, dare i say, features of MyMadison mobile. The second three lines is placed where the home screen icon is placed when on a different page, but is missing when on the home page itself. The functionality is the same, presumably, as tapping on it only makes the screen load for what seems to be an unbearable amount of time before doing nothing else, seemingly telling the user they made a mistake. The three lines, denoting a drop down, next to the defunct home screen do have a purpose, but someone may not realize it if they mistakenly tap even a centimeter to the left. However, that purpose is bizarre as well, and ultimately just adds more confusion without adding any new functionality. The drop down is a list form of the symbols already present on the home screen, with the same icons used and the text only slightly bigger. One may assume that the arrows to the left would create additional drop downs telling the user about sub categories in the icon of choosing, but i can assure you they don’t. Or if they do, the ability to click on the arrows such that those menus appear is only for the smallest of fingers. So with the promise of more loading, the side bar simply presents a second way of doing what the icons on the first screen already do, just with the promise of being even more misleading.
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Employee Tab: An Unnecessary Redundancy
The Employee tab is functional and identical in layout to the home screen, but supposedly more tailored to a jmu campus employee rather than any student needs. Why this tab would also need Card Services, Communication Center, JMU Mobile, or Password management is not apparent; these hyperlinks are the same as the main tab. In the desktop version, a tab is displayed for all these user or system specific tasks, something that would nicely reduce clutter here while avoiding redundancy. However, to their credit, the rest of the tab works similar to the desktop site and can be considered acceptable design.
Navigation Nightmares and Broken Links
Actually clicking on an icon takes the user, eventually, to a source not completely unlike the page they might see on the desktop site. Student center and finance are listed together, as they are on the desktop site, but that really only highlights the icons needlessness on the home page. At least the home button now properly displays. The appearance is unoffensive if not boring, but it doesn’t distract from the main functionality. However, a different issue arises when going to any of these pages: they do not know how to handle the back arrow on a browser. Even just going to class search and then trying to get back to the student center by pressing the back arrow, the system quickly stopped letting me press on links, not showing any responsiveness, and ultimately freezing to force me to close the app down manually so i could reenter the site. The fact that an ubiquitous task could not only not do as advertised but crash the site altogether is a core failing of design functionality, and even if this was the only issue, would disqualify the site from repeat use. Unluckily, the site has at least one more core issue, and that’s the core failure of the icons on the main page to do anything. After clicking on academics and trying to figure out my graduation requirements, I’m slowly redirected to a screen in which i supposedly have no access to. It should be noted this is the same for password management, so that’s at least two icons doing absolutely nothing but redirect you to a new page, laughing at one’s attempts to do anything constructive. After toiling with the site and attempting to get anything done, meeting this screen does nothing but make the user want to give up and find the closest computer.
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tags: #james #madison #university #mymadison #information
