Case Study

Creating an experiential learning hub for a higher education client

Helping a University develop a one-stop-shop for their students to learn about experiential learning and the opportunities available to them.

The Problem

If an opportunity falls in the forest, does anyone know about it?

Our client, a major State University well-known for innovation, has been being putting an emphasis on getting more students to take advantage of learning opportunities outside of the classroom. An industry phrase they use for these opportunities is "Experiential Learning".

Many experiential learning offerings are available at this Institution, but the students do not have one place they can visit to learn about them and find postings that are a good fit.

A picture of a wall covered with sticky notes

The Team

Collaborating with an two agencies and the client stakeholders

MY ROLE

UX Strategist

My role was determining the information architecture of the website, as well as the layout and functionality of the pages, in addition to co-facilitating the design sprint.

TEAM MEMBER

Content Strategist

I worked with the content strategist on the account to co-facilitate a 5 day design sprint.

TEAM MEMBER

Team: Designer

We collaborated with another agency and their designers to maintain the desired functionality while conforming to the design system of the institution.

TEAM MEMBER

Team: Developer

I worked closely with our development team to specify the functionality of various modules and adjust modules when the desired functionality would be outside of scope.

TEAM MEMBER

Team: AM/PM

I maintained daily communication with the account and project managers to answer any questions that may have come their way in-between meetings with the client.

TEAM MEMBER

The Client

The team had weekly meetings with the client to touch base on project status and answer any questions that had come up during stakeholder discussions. The client was also an active participant in the design sprint that kicked off our engagement.

Coming to the solution

A project in five phases

This project can be broken down into five phases:

  • Desk Research
  • Design Sprint
  • Strategy
  • Design
  • Development

The majority of the project was spent in Information Gathering and Strategy, with Design and Development executing on the vision that had been laid out in the initial stages.

Pseudo personas: Student, Connector, and Creator
Phase 1

Desk Research

Our engagement began with some time to get up-to-speed on the current state of the Institution’s experiential learning offerings. Experiential Learning encompasses everything that a student does outside of the classroom to contribute to their education. This can range from part-time jobs, to internships, research, volunteering, and study abroad.

What we found was that information and opportunities were scattered across various program-specific subdomains throughout the University’s web presence. Based on this research I developed three proto personas to help us with our next step, a design sprint

Phase 2

Design Sprint

We planned a 5 day long design sprint, as developed by the team at Google Ventures.  

A whiteboard with a diagram drawn on it

Day 1

On day one we identified the problem by interviewing experts, wrote dozens of “how might we” questions, and organized & dot voted on the “how might we” questions.

Day 2

The second day was spent sketching and ideating solutions through various methods, such as competitor research, crazy eight sketches, and rough storyboards.

Day 3

On the third day we discussed the storyboards from day two and voted on them. After voting we chose to mashup a couple of the options. We then created a more fleshed-out storyboard from our mashup.

Day 4

Me and one other person worked on turning our storyboard into an interactive prototype through Adobe XD. The rest of the team worked on developing content and prepping for user testing.

Day 5

On Day 5 we conducted in-person user testing of our prototype with 5 participants. One person was in the room with our participant while the rest of the team, including myself, watched from a separate room and took positive and negative notes about how the users were interacting with the prototype. After the user testing we compared notes, looked for patterns, and prepared for the next phase, strategy.

Phase 3

Strategy

During the strategy phase I analyzed all of the findings from the user testing and identified areas where we needed to adjust/improve on our prototype. The general premise of our prototype was pretty sound, but we identified that users weren’t able to identify with the 20 experiential learning categories we were using.

A screenshot of a spreadsheet showing an overview of card sorting

Card Sort

In order to better align the experiential learning offerings with a student's viewpoint we conducted a card sort. The client identified 28 participants for us. 23 students completed the exercise and from there I analyzed the results, ultimately deciding on 5 groupings of experiential learning.

A screenshot of the minimum viable product mockup

Minimum Viable Product

The next step was deciding on what would be in our minimum viable product and what would be tabled for future phases. During the design sprint prototype we had taken on a lot, mocking up a full website with a quiz, account creation, account customization, and progress tracking, all nested in a brochure-style wrapper site.

A screenshot illustrating that some features were cut from the MVP

Some features get the axe

During user testing, participants were split on the value of tracking their experiences through a platform they would leave behind after graduation. Some liked this idea, while others preferred to use a more established and visible option, such as LinkedIn. Because of this we decided to remove the user account features from our MVP.

A mockup of the experience finder
Phase 4

Design

After deciding on the scope of our MVP my role was oversight. I attended weekly check-ins with the project team as well as meetings with the client in case any questions came up about intended functionality.

When clarification was needed I provided it and when we ran into any complications with making our design work within the University's design system I helped to find compromises that maintained the essentials of the experience.

A screenshot of some code
Phase 5

Development

The development process went very smooth, with only some minor hiccups revolving around animated backgrounds in one section of the site.

Throughout the wireframe and design process we used the University's design system, with only a few cosmetic modifications, which really paid off in this final stretch of the project.

The Solution

Ultimately we delivered a one-stop-shop for the Institution’s students to find out about experiential learning opportunities that are available to them. The University team that we worked with is now tasked with collaborating with other departments within the Institution to build out the directory of available opportunities. 

Challenges and takeaways

CHALLENGE

Dedicating time for a design sprint

One of the biggest challenges we faced was finding time for 8 people to dedicate 5 days of their time to a design sprint over the summer. We ended up splitting our sprint into a Tuesday-Friday plus the next Monday, which was not ideal as the weekend break reduced the sense of urgency.

CHALLENGE

Using an unfamiliar design system

Another hurdle was fitting this innovative concept within an existing design system. While the Institution that we were working with has repeatedly been awarded for their innovation, their design system was geared towards static, informational department websites, and therefore fairly rigid.

CHALLENGE

Fitting everything within scope

The last challenge was scope/budget. Since we were working with a public institution the budget for this project was pre-established and had both time and money constraints. This burden largely fell on our account and project management team, but I worked with them to adjust our deliverables as needed. 

TAKEAWAY

Limit the design sprint complexity

The biggest thing I learned was that for design sprints the “problem to be solved” needs a smaller scope. We prototyped a full website when what we needed to do was focus on a single aspect of a website. By stretching ourselves thin, people had to work outside of the hours that we allocated, and many of the prototype's features were not interactive.