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One Purdue and the Employee Launchpad

Before the pandemic began, I was able to easily clock in and out of my on-campus job by swiping my Purdue ID card. Now, however, I have to clock in online through One Purdue and the Employee Launchpad. I often do this from my phone via the mobile website. Frustration led me to choose One Purdue for my expert analysis because I was often unable to accomplish my task. The mobile website often failed by not loading or giving an error. The options shown on One Purdue were also inconsistent, and I often couldn’t locate the Employee Launchpad before my shift began, even though it is the only application I have ever consistently used. In response, I decided to analyze One Purdue’s desktop website. In my findings, I have found that the desktop website is only somewhat better than the mobile one.

Beginning with One Purdue’s weaknesses, there is simply too much going on. All of One Purdue’s 73 applications are included under the “Most Popular” category with very little information to distinguish or sort them. It can be assumed that the color of the icon is meant to distinguish the category an application belongs to, but they are actually not connected in any other way. One Purdue also displays a rating for each application out of five stars. These ratings are not helpful because many applications have no reviews (zero stars) or very few low reviews. Since these reviews do not help the user learn more about the application, they are essentially just visual clutter.

Another weakness One Purdue has is that the design of its application assortment doesn’t match the rest of the website. The website that One Purdue is embedded in features the standard Purdue black and gold, but the disparate color of the applications disrupts the flow of the website’s design. This issue could be resolved if the colors of the icons were changed to match Purdue’s branding.

One Purdue’s mobile website fails in a way that the website does not. On the website, applications that a user opens are kept in the “My Favorites” category created after a user selects an application. The mobile website does not keep track of a user's most used applications, making it difficult to find a specific application each time one needs to use it. If it did, I would not have had trouble finding the Employee Launchpad so many times.

One Purdue’s website and the Employee Launchpad do have some strengths. The Employee Launchpad features a design that imitates a clock-in button that feels instinctual to use. To clock in, you simply press the circle. The circle then changes color to indicate that the user is clocked in. When it is time to clock out, simply press the button, and the color changes back to its original color. Personally, I like this feature because it makes sense to me and it is easy to use. Another strength of One Purdue is the organization of information about each application. There is a hierarchy of details that helps users easily distinguish between the purpose of different applications. One Purdue also offers users a lot of options. These options make One Purdue useful because so many applications can be accessed through it.

Overall, One Purdue’s website does allow users to navigate to other applications. It also offers users a lot of information, although it isn’t as visually pleasing as it could be. One Purdue could improve its mobile website to function more like their website. Keeping track of a user’s most used applications makes returning to them easier. 73 applications are a lot of applications to try to navigate through. I think One Purdue and the Employee Launchpad have a lot of potential to be useful applications for student workers.

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