The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is ranked in the top 100 universities worldwide, with a reputation for supporting future industries, practice-based learning and research with real-world impact. With a focus on technology and shaping a better future, we were a natural partner to reimagine their students' onboarding experience to better reflect their current realities and needs.
A positive student onboarding experience is a critical part of a student’s journey and a foundation for their future success at university. We were engaged by UTS to better understand commencing students’ experience when starting their studies and workshop ways with them to make it better.
The Opportunity
Anecdotally, it was clear that students’ onboarding experience at UTS, while partly meeting the needs of some students, was falling short of offering them what they needed to feel equipped, guided and empowered for a lifetime of learning and future success.
Our challenge was learning about students’ current onboarding experiences, including their challenges, expectations and aspirations. Our brief was to uncover patterns pointing to pain points and work with staff and students to explore opportunities for improvement. Finally, we explored solutions with staff and students to improve their onboarding experience to foster engagement, wellbeing, a sense of belonging and fruitful partnerships.
Our Approach
We took a human-centred design approach to uncovering what onboarding looks like for students now and working with them to create an inspiring story of what it could look like in the future. This approach involved actively engaging students throughout the project.
This meant that the results reflected students' actual needs and preferences and helped foster a sense of ownership and accountability for improving student experiences within the UTS learning community.
Understanding the current state
We reviewed existing research UTS had done to understand the current state better and identify any gaps or additional opportunities to focus our research efforts. This included information that students engage with, such as the UTS website, UTS app, UTS handbook and their digital software ecosystem. Our research focused on better understanding the student experience from previous research and investigating the key digital and physical environments that students interact with.
We also engaged with key stakeholders from within the university, including those from Design Practice, IT, Education and Student Administration, to help guide our research questions and find the information and sources that we needed.
On-campus observations
Our designers immersed themselves in campus life during O’Week and the activities of O’Day to observe students and staff moments and interactions in real-time. We used this research method to overcome the limitations of other research methods we planned to use, such as interviews and workshops, which rely on participants’ ability to recall and explain an experience. It also allowed our team to see and hear things they otherwise wouldn’t uncover and get a sense of how students and staff occupy and interact with the university’s physical spaces.
These observations highlight the sheer volume and intensity of activity on campus at this time. We later learned that for some students, this was a rich and wonderful experience, but for others, it was disorienting and overwhelming.
Interviews with students
We interviewed students from various backgrounds, experiences and faculties. Their voices and perspectives became the cornerstone of our work, shaping the story of the current state of the onboarding journey and the future state as they desire it to be.
Current state workshops with staff
In addition to interviews with students, we ran two in-person workshops with UTS staff, who play a role in supporting students through their onboarding experience. Not only did these face-to-face opportunities help us to connect with students and their experiences, but they also helped us to understand better staff and what their needs are so that they can deliver better experiences for students.
Defining the problem
Student Mental Models
Through our research, we discovered patterns among students’ different mental models and the various ways they shape their onboarding experience.
We used this to develop a mental model matrix to illustrate the contrasting mental models that impact an individual's onboarding experience. They represent a wide range of students across domestic and international cohorts undertaking undergraduate and postgraduate study. Initially created to communicate our research, it has since been tested with students and updated to reflect their insights and feedback.
Student Personas
We created four distinctive student personas to illustrate students' different onboarding needs and future aspirations. They were informed by the students we spoke to, each with their own values, attitudes, and mindsets. They offer insight into the diversity of onboarding students at UTS. We used them to help guide our future state blueprint and the iteration of students’ ideas for future improvements.
Each persona included a photo, their name and a brief description of who they are and what they’re studying, along with their values, goals, needs and why they chose UTS. We then shifted to focus on their expectations, impressions, challenges and any delightful moments they experienced as part of their onboarding journey.
Current state blueprint
From our research, we created a blueprint to communicate the current state of the student onboarding experience. It illustrates the students’ journey and perspectives, as well as reflections from staff at key moments. It also highlights where students experience significant challenges and the opportunities that stem from this.
Designing the future state
Ideation workshops with students
We engaged students in a series of activities centred around responding to critical needs or challenges they had identified. The ideas from these workshops were used to create various concepts designed to improve students' onboarding experience.
Developing clickable prototypes
We created a series of ten clickable digital prototypes to demonstrate the concepts we’d developed with students to test with other students and staff. Rather than just create static concept posters, we designed an interactive experience showcasing the main concepts and their features, highlighting how each connected to the relevant stage in the onboarding journey. The different concepts were then incorporated into our central concept: a new student dashboard. The prototyped dashboard serves as a landing page from where you could click through to the other concepts.
Testing concepts with students
We then tested the prototypes to explore the desirability of each concept and validate whether it supported their needs to improve their UTS onboarding experience. These one-hour sessions incorporated concept walk-throughs, during which we asked open-ended questions about their impressions and preferences about implementing them in the future.
Future state scenarios workshop with staff
A selection of these concepts was then tested and refined with staff in an in-person workshop. In these sessions, we worked in groups to explore scenarios where our personas might use or benefit from the proposed concepts. Staff considered the idea as it might be practically applied, including any inherent challenges, limitations, and ways we might evolve it further.
Designing a Theory of Change
We created a Theory of Change to illustrate the pathways of change that will happen when our strategies and concepts are implemented successfully. A key benefit of a Theory of Change is helping the reader understand how immediate actions we take now can translate into short, medium, and long-term outcomes to realise a shared vision.
It also shows what indicators we can look for to know if the changes we’re making are successful and have the desired impact.
Future state blueprint
Our future state blueprint is an imagined and aspirational capture of a future student’s onboarding experience. It features the experience of a fifth persona, an archetype of the other four personas we developed. It takes you on her onboarding journey and showcases the concepts we’ve prototyped to demonstrate how they help foster engagement, well-being, and a sense of belonging.
Recommendations and final report
Finally, we developed an interactive report to guide the reader not only through our research but also to act as a wayfinder through the various artefacts we have developed as part of our work and the stories and anecdotes of those who helped inform it.
Outcomes
This work has provided a clear path forward to improving students' future onboarding experiences. By responding to students' voices and working with them to ideate and prototype potential improvements, it has also highlighted how these offer an opportunity to improve not only students’ ongoing experience at university but also the experience of the staff who support them.
UTS now has:
- A deeper understanding of student's current onboarding experience
- A framework to better understand students’ mental models
- Personas that provide insight into students' diversity and help us better understand their unique needs, challenges, and aspirations.
- A clear vision for a future onboarding experience that better meets the needs and expectations of beginning students.
- A range of concept prototypes inspired by student ideas to improve their onboarding journey.
Key learning and takeaway
Simplify and streamline to improve student's experience of university life
What became evident from this substantive body of work is the clear need to simplify students' university experience. Not only during onboarding but throughout their entire university journey. This doesn’t necessarily mean less effort, rather it means critically examining what already exists and finding ways to streamline it. This type of work requires a clear vision and leadership as well as significant effort to align across departments, faculties and teams.
Reflections
"The Portable project team did an outstanding job using human-centred design approach and comprehensive research and design techniques to highlight multiple ways in which we can enhance our student’s onboarding experience. They left us with a clear vision and comprehensive set of documentation that we are continuously and iteratively utilising to work towards creating a seamless and engaging onboarding journey."
Jyoti Di-Cola, UTS
"Hearing the innovative ideas from students and working with our UTS partners to roadmap them was a rewarding experience. My own transition into university life was challenging, so I'm excited that we can make things better for future students."
Olivia Gregory, Portable
Team
- Olivia Gregory, Senior Producer
- Adam Corcoran, Principal Design Strategist
- Shoni Ellis, Senior Design Strategist
- Jen Yani, Senior Communication Designer
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