Publishing before transition was complicated. Each training location had a state and a publish flag, which determines if the course appears in Find and can be applied to on UCAS Apply. Then the content has its own state – Empty, Draft or Published.
You could write and publish content for new courses on Publish, they’d be labelled green, but they would not appear online if the user had not set their training locations to running in UCAS (or if UCAS had not approved this by setting the publish flag to yes).
User research
We tested this courses quiz with users to see if they understood each state given the information provided.
Example states (second iteration)
Changes in this design:
- replaced Last published column with an ‘Is it on Find?’ column, to be explicit
- removed view on website link, making the Find status the link itself
- changed the ‘Draft #2’ state to be clear that it is published and on Find, the concept of ‘second edition’ is not needed yet
This is the design we tested in the quiz with users.
Course | Status | Is it on Find? | Applications | Vacancies |
---|---|---|---|---|
New course, just added (N123) PGCE with QTS full time | New | No – still in draft | ||
Draft course, not published (DD23) QTS full time | Draft | No – still in draft | ||
Published, but has unpublished changes (D123) QTS full time |
Published * - Unpublished changes |
Yes – view online | Open | Yes (Edit) |
Published course (P123) PGCE with QTS full time | Published | Yes – view online | Open | Yes (Edit) |
Published before applications open (PP23) PGCE with QTS full time | Published | Yes – view online | Open from 3 Mar 2019 |
Yes (Edit) |
Published but full (PC23) QTS full time | Published | Yes – view online | Closed | No (Edit) |
Withdrawn course (W123) QTS full time | Withdrawn | No – withdrawn | Closed | No |
Example states (initial design)
Problems identified with this design in peer review, before user research:
- ‘View on website’ is not a clear enough indicator that the course is on Find
- ‘Draft #2’ was universally misunderstood – it’s live but has unpublished changes, people thought it was not live
- The last published column was not useful
Course | Status | Last published | Applications | Vacancies? |
---|---|---|---|---|
New course, just added (N123) QTS full time | New | |||
Draft course, not published (DD23) QTS full time | Draft | |||
Draft course, published before (D123) QTS full time – View on website | Draft #2 | 10 August 2018 | Open | Yes (Edit) |
Published course (P123) QTS full time – View on website | Published | 10 August 2018 | Open | Yes (Edit) |
Published before applications open (PP23) QTS full time – View on website | Published | 10 August 2018 | Open from 6 October 2018 |
Yes (Edit) |
Published but full (PC23) QTS full time – View on website | Published | 10 August 2018 | Closed | No (Edit) |
Withdrawn course (W123) QTS full time | Withdrawn | Withdrawn on 10 August 2018 |
Closed | No |
Rolled over course (R123) QTS full time | Rollover |