Design Thinking in Practice: The Case for a Redesign to Improve a Reservation System in an Educational Environment

Educational environment settings have a finite number of resources distributed or shared between staff, professors, and students. It is essential to build efficient tools to manage these resources timely so they can be allocated where needed. This paper shows the process comprising distinct steps that went into redesigning a legacy classroom, lab, and equipment reservation system for a public university, going from a previously unwieldy system to a more modern and user-friendly implementation that practically utilizes design thinking and user-centered design principles. The first phase utilized a quantitative survey approach to hone in on specific pain points and create well-structured requirements, which were followed by the development phase that used software engineering and architecture to build an application more attuned to the sensibilities of the contemporaneous mobile-focused software landscape. An evaluation study then tested the application through a qualitative approach, conducting interviews with the professors to define its user base and when the tool would eventually be deployed. This paper contributes to the literature by providing a practical case study of design thinking and user-centered design principles to provide a better user experience.