The Challenge

A regional university with approximately 4,200 enrolled students was experiencing a sustained increase in help desk tickets related to LMS navigation. Students couldn’t find course materials, missed deadlines because announcements weren’t surfaced clearly, and faculty were building course shells inconsistently.

The institution had Canvas LMS deployed, but without a UX governance framework or design standards. Accessibility had never been formally audited.

My Approach

I began with a three-week discovery phase: student and faculty interviews, usability testing with think-aloud protocols, a full accessibility audit against WCAG 2.1 AA standards, and analysis of 18 months of help desk ticket data.

The ticket data told a clear story — 61% of student support contacts were navigation-related. I developed a Canvas Course Design Standards Guide and a master course shell template including:

• A standardized homepage layout with a priority “This Week” module
• Consistent navigation structure across all course shells
• Accessible file naming and alt-text conventions
• Color contrast standards and keyboard-navigable elements
• LTI integration guidelines for third-party tools

Outcomes

Support tickets dropped by 40% in the first semester of the pilot. End-of-semester student satisfaction scores for “ease of course navigation” increased from 2.9 to 4.1 on a 5-point scale. The university adopted the Design Standards Guide as an institutional policy document, required for all new faculty onboarding.