This summary is based on the document compiled by Atishay (@atish3, Service Coordinator), Ranadeep (Membership, W22 President), Kate (President), and many other Fall 2021 officers.
Purpose
This document was written to compile a list of known flaws, including technical bugs, outdated or inaccurate content, and interface issues, of the TBP website. Many of these issues have been documented elsewhere and have been known for several years now, but have gone unaddressed to date. While this is not an exhaustive list, the issues here directly impede the ability of the officer corps to fulfill their roles and reflect poorly on the chapter as a whole.
Core Philosophy: User Experience
“Know thy User, for they are not you”
Usability: Can you get the job done in a way that is easy and pleasant?
The purpose of any passable website is to allow users to accomplish whatever tasks they visit the site for. This means:
Completing a website task should be quick and easy (Efficiency)
The user should be able to navigate the site and figure out how to accomplish their task (Discoverability)
The user should understand the underlying mechanics of how their task affects them and the overall state of things (Learnability)
i.e. What happens when I sign up for an event?
I.e. what happens when I fail to sign in to an event?
The user should remain apprised of how their actions affected the controller state (Responsiveness/Feedback)
Post-Usability: The website should portray the chapter as a professional organization.
Aesthetics are not the focal point of a redesign. But they are integral to the system’s purpose of interfacing with internal and external users.
Visiting the website should be a pleasant experience.
Internal
Elections
278
259
Event Creation
260
279
Waitlist
261
Hour Assignment
262
263
Office Hours Calendar
264
Lack of Documentation for Officers
265
Aging Codebase
266
Inconsistent Edit Permissions
267
Officer Calendar
268
Bylaw Edit Access
269
Photo Uploads
270
Member-Facing
Website Speed
271
TBPlayground
272
Member Pronouns
273
External
Contact Links
274
Leadership Page
275
Website UI Optimization
276
Outreach Page
277
Conclusion
While the bugs we have listed above are numerous and in urgent need of fixing, we would like to clarify that the responsibility for this does not fall on one person alone. It would be unreasonable to expect anyone, regardless of previous experience or skill, to maintain the website and address all of these issues in a timely manner, especially considering we all have responsibilities outside of TBP. This isn’t a call for the website maintainers to fix this all themselves, but rather for them to expand access to the website, as agreed upon earlier in the semester, to those willing and able to help maintain and improve the website.
Purpose
This document was written to compile a list of known flaws, including technical bugs, outdated or inaccurate content, and interface issues, of the TBP website. Many of these issues have been documented elsewhere and have been known for several years now, but have gone unaddressed to date. While this is not an exhaustive list, the issues here directly impede the ability of the officer corps to fulfill their roles and reflect poorly on the chapter as a whole.
Core Philosophy: User Experience
Internal
278
259
260
279
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
Member-Facing
271
272
273
External
274
275
276
277
Conclusion
While the bugs we have listed above are numerous and in urgent need of fixing, we would like to clarify that the responsibility for this does not fall on one person alone. It would be unreasonable to expect anyone, regardless of previous experience or skill, to maintain the website and address all of these issues in a timely manner, especially considering we all have responsibilities outside of TBP. This isn’t a call for the website maintainers to fix this all themselves, but rather for them to expand access to the website, as agreed upon earlier in the semester, to those willing and able to help maintain and improve the website.