The word "Craft" spray painted on a canvas.

College of Engineering Unit(s): 
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Team: 
Lauren Galle, Kate Galle, Hamza Munaf and Aeijan Bajracharya

Project Description: 

Abstract
The OSU Craft Center Online Tool is a website that allows OSU students to register for membership and classes at the OSU Craft Center without having to physically visit its front desk and it gives Craft Center employees the ability to manage student membership and offered classes.

Problem Statement
Currently, the OSU Craft Center has an outdated membership and class registration system. Students are required to physically go to the Craft Center in the Student Experience Center to register for membership and classes they are interested in taking. On top of that, both types of registrations are done on paper, so an employee must always be present to oversee every aspect of the processes. This can be time consuming, especially if many people want to register at the same time. Often, there are long lines that form in front of the door to the Craft Center, which can be troublesome for those with busy schedules. With the current system, people who want to become members and take classes struggle to do so because of the slow and time-consuming process.

Solution
To improve the registration processes, we developed a website that allows OSU students to complete membership forms and register for classes at their convenience rather than having them physically visit the Craft Center during its open hours. Our web application also allows Craft Center workers to see who is a registered member and what classes they are registered for. Admins have access to a screen with a table that lists all the members and the classes they are taking. Now, the employees of the Craft Center do not have to worry about decoding messy handwriting or keeping track of member information in an outdated spreadsheet, as all of this data is managed in a streamlined database.

Obstacles and Workarounds
While our original plan was to create the web application for both OSU affiliates and the general public, due to time constraints, we had to shift our focus. We worked closely with the employees of the Craft Center to narrow down their most wanted features. Ultimately, we decided to focus on the student users, as this makes up 86% of their user base. With this refocused plan, we were able to achieve the rest of the Craft Center’s vision in our time frame. 

Technology We Used
The following is the list of technologies that we used to build our website:
Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Razor Pages, and Bootstrap Framework
Backend: C#, ASP.NET Core 5.0 MVC with Entity Framework, and JQuery 
Database: Microsoft SQL Server
ONID Two-Factor Authentication Login: SAML 2.0

Information About Our Client
The OSU Craft Center provides resources that allow students to express themselves through art and creativity to get through the stresses of college. Students automatically pay a fee through their tuition so they are open to use all the tools that are housed in the basement of the Student Experience Center and take advantage of the classes provided by the Craft Center. Classes at the Craft Center range from ceramics to fiber arts to woodworking and more.

Mentors
We had Dan Vega, who served as our project supervisor, and Mark Clements, who was our technical advisor, as our mentors for this project.

For more information about our website, please visit the link in the project website section.
 

Project Website(s):