My.ryerson is getting a makeover.
Computing and Communications Services (CCS) is launching the newly redesigned my.ryerson portal on February 6.
The redesign will only affect two pages of the portal – the landing page of my.ryerson and the first page after logging in. It is the portal’s first major revision since it was implemented in 2003, according to Jim Buchanan, assistant director for client services at CCS.
“We thought it was dated and not intuitive,” Buchanan said. “We heard a lot of anecdotal feedback from people that content was difficult to find, the labels on things were not intuitive, and in general everything was hard to navigate.”
CCS brought in Toronto-based Usability Matters, an external company that tests web user-friendliness, to evaluate the portal and make new recommendations.
My.ryerson will now be user-friendly, better organized and more aesthetically pleasing than it was before, Buchanan said.
The changes could help students such as Jessica Laton, a fourth-year hospitality and tourism management student, who says she avoids logging in to the portal unless she absolutely needs to access Blackboard and to look at her grades.
“I only notice announcements if they’re for my program and courses,” Laton said. “The page is visually cluttering … I just ignore the areas that I don’t use.”
Buchanan said the portal has more important content besides grades such as security updates, information about CCS outages and other Ryerson news.
“We are hoping that in this (redesigned) stage, people might actually go look at this content,” he said.
CCS originally tried to launch the revamped portal in November 2014, but ran into technical difficulties. This time, they do not anticipate any issues.
“We did a lot of work to identify where the problem was and we have taken steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Buchanan said.
He adds that this is just the beginning of a continual process of improving the portal.
“This is a small step and we’ve got more things coming,” he said. “Down the road, we are going to start talking about what else we can make available to people that might make their lives easier.”
The portal will be unavailable between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. Friday while the changes are taking place.
By Anuba Thiagarajah
This is a joint byline.
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