15th June 2023

Improving the CoderDojo website experience

This year we are working on improving community members’ experience of our website and platform. Our first focus was on our website and the Dojo’s profile pages. Soon when you log in you will see a new dashboard. The functionality of the dashboard will be pared back initially, while we focus on making it more stable, responsive, and user-friendly.

Working on three areas

The website and platform improvements are focused on three areas:

The CoderDojo front end – the webpages most people see and interact with
The Application Programming Interface (API) – how data is pulled from our database and presented to people using our site, eg. those searching for a Dojo
The database – this involves moving our database to more sustainable infrastructure in the long term

Our team’s priorities

We have a lot of complex work to do, but we’re trying to release useful updates as quickly as we can. Our main focus is to make sure people have a good experience and that the updates we release are of high quality.

A significant portion of the work involves improving the behind-the-scenes parts of the platform, like the API and database. These changes won’t be visible on the website, but they aim to make things faster and improve the overall experience. You may have already noticed faster speeds when searching for a Dojo as a result of these improvements.

What the new changes will look like

Our next update is to the dashboard that people see when they log into the platform. We’ll be moving over to the new platform piece by piece for the next few months. As a result, some links may lead you to the old site. This is nothing to worry about.

While the functionality of the dashboard will be pared back for now, we’re focusing on making it more responsive and user-friendly. Over the course of a year, our team has done extensive user testing to make sure that the dashboard is clear and easy to use.

How the changes will impact you

The new dashboard will primarily have features related to champion and volunteer responsibilities. This includes training and support resources, as well as functionality around managing a Dojo profile.

For parents and guardians, the new platform will aim to make it easier to subscribe to updates about the Dojo they are connected to and its upcoming events. However, as we are simplifying the process for this group, the dashboard will not have resources specifically tailored to them.

How you can get involved

The digital team will be hard at work over the next few months to improve the dashboard and other platform features, we’d love to hear your thoughts when the new dashboard goes live. We will provide opportunities on the new dashboard to rate and give feedback on your experience.