The process of planning university courses remains a stressful and confusing experience for students. Sam Sun and I asked, what could be done to take the pressure off this experience?

Done in a short three-week assignment, we worked with the time and resource constraint to present a concept of OCAD University’s “My Progress” page that dramatically improves this experience without requiring a total overhaul of the service and system already present.

A Streamlined Academic Dashboard

What can we do to to make our university's registration service easier?
User testing
Wireframing
Service mapping
Journey mapping
Persona mapping
Team
  • Shoji Ushiyama: Service/UX/UI designer
  • Sam Sun: Service/UX/UI designer
Context

INDS-3011 Service Design, Autumn 2022

Tools used

Figma, Figjam, Photoshop

"How am I supposed to plan my degree when I don't even know what classes I can, can't, need, or don't need to take?"

Problem Space: Information Breakdown

Why does planning university classes feel so cumbersome, even though it's something we do every year?

We always felt that registering for courses at university was very tedious, despite being familiar with the process. To start, we conducted some user interviews to get a broad sense of what people found so troublesome with this service.

What did people say about the course planning experience?

"I find myself having a million tabs and windows open when I register for courses. It's a lot to juggle."

"Last year when I tried to register for my courses, the system told me I was not eligible! Why didn't it say so earlier when I was still planning them?!"

"I just let student advising tell me what courses I needed to take this year. I had no idea otherwise."

Defining: What's Missing?

People felt that the dashboard was missing important information they needed. The question was, what exactly was missing?

Our project focused on the My Progress dashboard, the go-to page for students who wanted to plan their courses, providing information on their academic progress and a list of courses they will need to take for their degree.

We began with mapping out the experience of a second-year ESL student trying to plan their upcoming year’s courses, to help consolidate initial findings.

We found that the process of registering for courses had users asking some common, critical questions. I tried to evaluate how well the service answered them.

This painted a clear picture of what was the problem:

  • Only two of the six questions are easy to answer on the service!
  • Another two were available on the dashboard, but were buried all the way at the bottom of the page...
  • And the final two questions were effectively nowhere to be found.
As a result, the user experience feels fragmentary, with the user needing to scavenger hunt to get what they need.

Developing: Breaking Through the Service

We knew there was something a bit deeper going on. To find out where the information disconnect was happening, we created a service map to pinpoint these problems.

The service map showed that many of the backend support processes needed to deliver this information already exist in the system! They just weren't aligned properly to the moment the user needed the information in their journey.

With all this in mind, we hypothesised how we could improve this experience by addressing these key pain points.

To...
Key solution hypotheses

Degree requirements shown at a more visible location on the dashboard.

Make the sample course plan available to access on the dashboard.

Service checks student record against programme course plan to give recommendations on courses.

Service checks for student eligibility for a course as they browse the catalogue/dashboard lists.

"It's hard to find my degree requirements on the dashboard."

"I find it cumbersome and cluttering to have to search for and find our sample course plan."

"I wish I didn't have to bust out the pen and paper to figure out if I'm able to take this class."

"I'm not sure what classes I should be taking this year."

"It's so frustrating when the system tells me that I'm not eligible for my courses after I'm done planning!"

From...
Current user pain points

Final Concept: Bridging Information Gaps

I investigated how streamlining the backend to would help information flow more smoothly from service to the user.

I first sorted the user questions into groups and matched them with a page on the portal. This would mean that for each step of the user journey, there would be only one corresponding "location". These were then connected to the necessary backend processes and supporting infrastructure.

With this user question-process map, I extrapolated out into a full new service blueprint, to show the reduced fragmentation of the service.

What benefits can this new model bring?

Boosted student satisfaction

Fewer students scrambling to fill last-minute course requirements means more students in classes they want to take, and higher overall student satisfaction.

Possible KPI measures
  • Increased student satisfaction ratings in course surveys.
  • Increased rate of class planning before registration date.
  • Increased rate of registered classes matching planned classes by term start.
  • Reduced rate of dropped classes before term break.
Simplified system architecture

The streamlined service model consolidates the registration service's digital backend, making it easier to maintain and upgrade, reducing downtime and costs.

Possible KPI measures
  • Reduced system average downtime length.
Less strain on Student Advising

A more helpful registration service frees up resources at Student Advising, who are often swamped helping students with routine course planning.

Possible KPI measures
  • Reduced rate of advising requests during peak registration periods.
  • Reduced appointment waiting time around and after peak registration periods.
Less strain on Registrar

A clearer registration system will lead to fewer registration mistakes by students that need to be corrected by the Registrar, freeing up resources there as well.

Possible KPI measures
  • Reduced rate of Registrar appeal requests around and after peak registration periods.

Frontend Mockup: Clarifying Course Information

With the service structure revamped, we also wanted to visualise this for the user on the frontend by creating medium-fidelity wireframe mock-ups for our final presentation.
Degree Requirements

Now, the most important information about a student's progress is the first thing they see, right at the top of the page.

Course eligibility

Finally, I envisioned the course catalogue checking and warning the user for unmet requirements, so the student could see this information as they browsed for courses.

How did our audience respond?

"I wish this was a thing now. It makes so much more sense."

"I like how the dashboard is now, like, actually useful to me. I wish you had a prototype so I could try it."

"I've emailed the Chair of the Industrial Design Programme to see if the university would be interested in this project."

(Said by my professor!)

What did I learn from this project?

Sometimes, a front-of-house problem is actually a back-of-house problem in disguise...
Drill down deep

While the final presentation consisted largely of UI mockups, it was still very instructive to consider how the backend processes were linked and what steps would be needed to be taken to implement these improvements.

As someone who specialises in frontend matters of UX/UI, “drilling down” to backstage actions was insightful to help inform design direction, without which may have resulted in a more (literally) superficial solution.

Not every problem is a nail

I initially thought that the problem with the dashboard was an unclear visual style with the way information was presented. However, that assumption turned out to be incomplete and went much deeper.

As a visually-oriented person, this experience taught me that I can't always count on the best solution being the one that happens to align with my existing proficiencies. Besides, it's always good to find an opportunity to learn something new.

For next time...

I think in a real world situation, this project would require the collaboration of different stakeholders, including university administration, faculty, and system engineers, alongside greater input from the student body. Deep problems like these affect a lot of people beyond the end user and it would be critical to make sure all constraints and requirements were assessed for the design process.

I think that having more time to also explore this problem space would also have helped me sharpen my service design skills and consider more possibilities to approaching this problem. Still, I'm pleased with what was accomplished in a very short three week time span.