Preface - Assumptions

Following are the assumptions underlying the UX strategy for Rice. 

End user targets

Rice is the Kuali middleware suite and application development framework that enables both business analysts and developers (from novice to expert), in the university environment, to easily and quickly create and customize the applications needed by their organizations.  Therefore, the Rice UX efforts will focus on understanding, validating, and designing to the needs of these end user types / personas / profiles:

• Business analysts** employed in the academic departments to create and manage their information needs.     
  • employed in University IT departments to create and manage the information needs across academic departments.
• Novice and experienced developers** employed in University IT departments to create and manage the information needs across academic departments.     
  • employed in the academic departments to create and manage their information needs.

Landscape of Tasks enabled by Rice

Rice is an open-source solution that consists of a documented set of APIs, data models, services, UI widgets, "how to" modules, a rapid application development framework and other tools, all of which can be embedded, customized and used across applications.  Rice is aimed to support standards and re-use, increasing the potential for interoperability across applications. 

Rice consists of:

• Kuali Rapid Application Development (KRAD) --  Rapid application development framework enabling universities to more quickly build custom applications.  This includes client (mostly the KNS framework) as well as web-based applications.
• Kuali Enterprise Workflow (KEW) -- Creating and managing workflows across the organization
• Kuali Enterprise Notification (KEN) -- Managing Notifications
• Kuali Identify Management (KIM) -- Creating, managing and ensuring identities and access privileges for roles and individuals
• Kuali Organization Management (KOM) -- Managing Organizations
• (there is also a service bus interface, KSB, that all components above and others can use)

!portfolio1.gif|KULRICE:border=1, alt=this image has the same information as the text list!\

UX Prioritization framework

As we start to integrate UX into the Rice portfolio, we'll be working on the prioritization model for UX coverage.  For example, when not all can be covered, a typical prioritization framework for UX coverage consists of the following:

• Affinity with key future directions (ARC, TRC, Foundation)
• Need-State of the current UI (or lack of)
• Relationship with key user pain points
• Team passion & belief in importance of the area, long-term impact, innovation-coolness, visibility across community

AND amount of effort & resources available / time in cycle!      

User Experience Goals/Objectives  

General UX goals for Kuali Rice

1. Maximize user uptake – make it easy to get started with any of the Rice tools (ease of install, setup, configure), to explore (enable self-discovery / awareness)
2. Minimize user disruption – bridge from old to new - make it easy to migrate, upgrade, and update
3. Maximize user productivity – eliminate the key pain points and bottlenecks, enable the key desired new tasks, significantly reduce the perception of time to goal

Note that "user" = business analyst, developer (experienced and novice), and end users of the applications created by business analysts and developers through the Kuali tools. 

Note also that the Rice team aims to support the accessibility targets of the applications built upon it.  For more details, see https://wiki.kuali.org/display/KULRICE/Rice+Accessibility.

General UX objectives for Kuali Rice

A key UX objective for Rice is that it "ships with" key application implementations that can be used by universities "out-of-the-box" to customize for their own use or as a reference model in building their custom applications (e.g., "minute-Rice"?, KS-lite?, KC-lite?, KFS-lite?). The objective is to make it easy to get started, to customize key Rice reference applications to fit each university's specific branding and other needs, or to enable re-use of key aspects to speed implementation.  

To do this, we plan to work on a two-pronged UX approach:

First, across all Rice tools, enable a common, "pluggable", horizontal UI architecture so that the user experience with one tool, in common task areas, is consistent with the user experience in the others.  For example, through a common install framework, we can enable users to transfer their learning gained through installing one tool to installing the next one.  A common install framework can also enable users to install multiple Rice tools within a single install sequence.  (Similar to the process of installing Word and PowerPoint applications - there is a common install framework and users simply select which of the Office applications to include). 

In addition to the above horizontal UX goals and objectives, each Rice tool should set their own more specific task and user-based UX goals and objectives, based on future directions, their UX research and understanding of key user pain points, and resource planning.  (See the opportunity map framework above.)

Accessibility Objectives

The UX objectives for Rice include supporting Accessibility standards.  For additional information on these, see https://wiki.kuali.org/display/KULRICE/Rice+Accessibility

User Experience Process

(Note that the Kuali Student team has a good reference UX process in place - see https://wiki.kuali.org/display/KULSTG/UX+Team)

For Rice, we're working to build a scalable user experience process model.   Each team will have different levels of resources and be at different levels of maturity in integrating UX into their process, and can scale the process to fit their maturity model. 

Highest priority engagements start at Platinum level, whereas projects that have no dedicated UX resource can still inherit some "basic health" UX aspects that were created in a different project but that apply horizontally across all Kuali projects.

UX deliverables and the teamwork needed to achieve those vary depending on the time in cycle.  Though continuous, UX work typically proceeds in parallel with a focus on multiple time horizons.

User Engagement

Timeline

See the UX framework above for the landscape of UX deliverables.  As we build out the Rice 2.1 plan, we'll determine which Rice projects will get UX coverage & at which levels.

For example, the major UX candidates at this time are the following (scroll down to the bottom to get to the child page links!) ...

1. Kuali Rapid Application Development (KRAD) framework -- information architecture & design.  KS engagement, leading UX.
2. Kuali Enteprise Workflow (KEW) -- user needs & objectives.  On candidate list already (not comprehensive, prioritized or committed):   1) action list improvement, 2) graphical workflow builder with drag-drop capability which automates / encapsulates / eliminates the xml-writing, 3) easy plug-in to 3rd-party tools.
3. Kuali Identity Management (KIM) -- user needs & objectives.
4. Getting Started with Rice -- user needs & objectives. 
5. ... (above list is under construction) ...
6.  

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