Making user-friendly experiences that leverage online collaboration

The recent rapid advancements in web technologies has led to an increase in the development of new devices, applications and methods of interaction that are continually evolving. However, the rate of these technological advancements outpaces those of design. This has also given rise to a new way of understanding how to work and collaborate online. Interestingly, in addition to this understanding came a corresponding increase in the frequency of online collaborations. A good example of this is a content management system. This system gives the ability for multiple users to collaborate online with the goal to maintain and create content for a website. However, during the time of writing this thesis, most content management systems come with limited functionality and not as user-friendly as they could be. As most of these systems are used by non tech-savvy users.   This thesis sets to understand social aspects of online collaboration, new design methodology, and to design and develop a user-friendly interface for both front-end and back-end admin area to leverage the online collaboration within an educational setting. Using both iterative and experimental approaches, I have tried and experimented with a few content management systems(CMS) in order to find their strengths and weaknesses. These CMS being Joomla, Drupal, SilverStripe and Wordpress. Then continued to develop a set of prototypes in which the research findings were applied to aid in the usability of both the front-end admin area and the back-end website.