Solutions · Experience Design
Student Placement Experience
Redesigned student-facing placement experiences using reusable accessible interface components and a shared development framework.
- Organisation
- University of Notre Dame Australia
- My role
- UX, front-end development and shared component design
- Technology
- HTML · CSS · JavaScript · Sonia Online · GitHub
The challenge
Placement information and tasks needed to be clearer for students across multiple schools without creating a separate, unmaintainable interface for each context.
Existing environment
Sonia Online, school-specific content and a controlled Development to Test to UAT to Production release workflow.
Requirements
- Clarify placement and checks information
- Support school-specific journeys
- Create reusable accessible components
- Work responsively within the host platform
- Make release and maintenance safer
Solution architecture
Design decisions
A shared codebase reduced divergence between school experiences.
Reusable cards and timelines created consistency while allowing content variation.
Vertical timelines were prioritised for small-screen readability; serpentine patterns remained an experiment rather than a default.
A staged release path separated development and stakeholder approval from production.
Experience design
Student information, placement details, checks, record books and ePortfolio forms are organised around the placement journey rather than the platform structure.
Implementation
Accessible HTML, CSS and JavaScript components are maintained in GitHub and applied through school-specific templates across controlled environments.
Outcome
Students received clearer, responsive placement journeys while the team gained a shared framework for developing and maintaining them.
What I learned
A component system is most useful when it standardises interaction without erasing meaningful differences between audiences.