Executive Summary

In Fall 2019 a limited constructive design effort was undertaken by a team of Interaction Design and Design Management students at The University of Kansas. The effort was proposed to understand the digital experience of university students and how that experience might be enhanced by particular qualities and characteristics of an institutional online application.

The Interaction Design team focused on the front end user experience offered by a portal or dashboard feature tied to individual student accounts and capable of being personalized to student needs and unique interests. The Design Management and Strategy team applied practical behavioral economic (BE) principles and best practice Waveline journey mapping techniques to encourage student engagement and track and foster better and more constructive student interactions with the university.

Proposed Design Strategies

The Design Management and Strategy team adapted two behavioral economic (BE) principles to the My.KU initiative.

Behavioral Economics Principles

Appeal to Individual Identity:

Students should see themselves as empowered and informed to plot their student careers, as reflected in his or her own personalized portal/dashboard.

Avoid Information Overload, User Overwhelm:

Student sees relevant information on their portal/dashboard when it is most needed.

Ethnographic Interviews

28 KU students (and alums) yielded a substantial qualitative data set which, in turn, was shaped into three composite user persona models used in this study

PDF of all 28 Interviews

Student Personas

Understand and Map

Student Card Sorting (left)

Relevance Placement (right)

By distinguishing what was already on the my.ku portal and adding what interviewees said was important to them, we were able to layout everything that should be in the new portal. This visual layout helped us determine what section each piece would fall under and how relevant it was to the students. From the information we learned from card sorting and relevance placement, we were able to confidently sort everything into its correct section.

Waveline User Journey Mapping

Found Opportunities from Waveline

1. Create a feeling of ownership by customizing their portal/dashboard and highlighting preferred/popular options.

2. Connect students to a larger community to foster a sense of belonging and a support system.

3. Highlight tools to lessen frustration during research and homework.

4. Provide enough resources throughout program to facilitate career planning.

Wireframes

Based off of the opportunities for design improvement found in research, personas and journey maps, we were able to construct wireframes to help KU IT visualize how the improved portal would look.

Student Portal/Dash:  PUBLIC PORTALS

Student Portal/Dash:  The Onboarding Process

The onboarding process would go in-depth and really make each student’s portal personalized by allowing them to select what topics interest them.

Task Scenario

Adam navigates from his my.ku portal using his phone to find the advising hours and office location of his Statistics professor in order to schedule an appointment.