Portal to a Better Student Experience

 

Overview:

During the pandemic, McMaster University wanted to generate ideas for creating a better student experience by creating a digital-first student-administrator experience that was inclusive for on-campus, commuting, and distance learning students.

 
 
 
 

Research Approach:

 

  • Stakeholder Interviews

    Conducted in-depth interviews with university administrators and faculty members spanning from Registrars to University Residences to capture all the administrator-student interactions.

  • Focus Groups

    Students were sorted into focus groups based on common administrative needs like athletes, commuters, international, graduate, and mature students to understand areas for improvement.

  • Card Sorting

    Students were intercepted to do card-sorting exercises to understand deeper tacit and latent emotions around specific interactions from admissions to alumni communication.

  • Design Artifacts

    User personas, journey maps, task workflows, and design principles were created to help build a better student portal that is linked across all departments to create a 360-degree profile and experience.

 

Results:

Through the project, the client was able to:

  • Deeply understand target student and administrator personas as the client continue the implementation of a better student CRM portal.

  • Shortlist and plan feature launch for an MVP version of the portal to get usability testing results from.

  • Ideate on potential use cases to enhance the student experience that is inclusive of physical and digital interactions.

 
 

Final Deliverables:

  • Containing pain points and areas for improvement for specific student-administrator interactions.

  • User personas, journey maps, task workflows and design principles to help with the portal creation.

  • List of prioritized features for the MVP build of the new student portal.