UL Lafayette launches a new ULink site for more customizable user experience

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette launched the new ULink site on Feb. 5. The new ULink allows students to easily access topics such as registration and student schedules, and allows students to customize their ULink for easier access and a better experience.

The platform that the old ULink is on is being discontinued this year. Due to this, the university had rebuilt ULink on a new platform called Ellucian Experience. It was made into the Banner systems and many other systems across campus so that everything was in one place and was more easily accessible to students and employees. 

Aimée Abshire, the senior director of web and digital strategy at UL Lafayette, said that the updated ULink gives students a chance to customize their experience and allows for a better experience.

“ULink gives students the power to customize their experience. They can hide cards on their homepage that they don’t use frequently, and add and organize the ones that they use most often,” Abshire said. “It makes for a more effective user experience.”

UL Lafayette had help to make this new ULink for the university and the help was a strong partnership between IT and the Office of Communications and Marketing. 

This team who created the new ULink for UL Lafayette had members of each office, which had brought expertise and a unique perspective to the making of the new ULink.

“Their goal was to provide a streamlined, customizable and user-friendly experience to campus,” said Abshire. 

On the new ULink, there are boxes called cards. These cards can be moved and or removed from the students’ view depending on the needs of the student. 

Students are also allowed to add cards to their ULink if needed. The customization of cards allows for students to access the cards and tasks that they use the most. 

The cards allow students to access what they use more frequently while also having access to everything else that they may need. 

The main goal of the new updated ULink was for students and employees to be able to have a customizable experience that would make their overall experience better. 

While the look of the new ULink may seem different, every link and box in the old ULink were recreated on the new ULink, so all of the information should look similar and familiar to users. 

The discover or search feature on the new ULink makes this version of ULink easier to use which should be easier for students to access and navigate. 

Knowing the main goal for what the IT and the Office of Communications and Marketing wanted to accomplish allowed for ideas to come together that would make access to the new ULink easier to navigate. 

It’s also customizable and allows for students, employees and staff to have a better user experience than what they had experienced with the old ULink. 

Last year, a survey was sent out across campus and there were over 800 responses about what students and employees did and did not like about the old ULink so that students and employees could give ideas for cards and layouts of the new ULink.

“We used the survey feedback to guide our work in the redesign. The number one request in the survey was customization,” said Abshire. “Before developing the new ULink, we conducted focus groups that included students, faculty, and staff to ask what they wanted to see and be able to do in the new ULink. They provided us with ideas for cards, layout, and overall design.”

Feedback is important when it involves a new and better experience for students and employees. 

With that in mind, the new ULink was created with the input and guidance of the people on UL Lafayette campus that need to access it daily for their work and studies.

Joshua Brown, a sophomore majoring in English with a concentration in professional writing likes being able to change the order of the cards on the new ULink.

“I think the ability to reorder the options is amazing and I do like that it’s more modern feel compared to the old one,” said Brown. “However, I do feel like it lost a bit of its charm? Which is a weird thing to complain about but it feels so much more bland to me. I’m sure with time I’ll come to like the new ULink more, but as of now, I think it sacrificed cohesion for convenience, but I definitely wouldn’t say it was a downgrade.”

With customization in mind due to student responses and input on the topic of the new ULink, it was added for students to create a space that allowed them to access things easier than before. Even though it is a bit different and will take time for students and employees to get used to, the main goal was for students to navigate ULink easier.

“The new ULink was created with the input and guidance of students. It is designed to provide you with a user-friendly way to engage with the University and complete important tasks in your student journey,” Abshire said. 

The new updated ULink allows students to have a better experience in accessing important tasks while also allowing them to customize their ULink that helps make their experience better for them. 

With these goals in mind, there will also be a mobile app, in companion to the new ULink which will be released in March. According to Abshire, it will provide campus with a customizable, mobile-friendly, and reliable ULink experience.