Work
Experience design to simplify intricate pathways into higher education
RMIT University
In Brief
In Detail
Challenge
RMIT University wanted to develop a comprehensive, accessible, and engaging digital experience ecosystem that empowered students to discover study options and the unique learning 'pathways' that RMIT University offers being one of just six dual-sector universities in Australia.
The challenge was to develop the industry benchmark experience for users to find the right degree based on their ATAR, as well as understand RMIT University's flexible 'pathways' which help students move through different levels of study (ie vocational courses through to undergraduate degrees) to reach the qualification they're aiming for.
Outcomes
Identified and solved service gaps which complicated decision-making for school leavers, and caused inefficiencies for RMIT staff
Complex — and at times manual — processes have been replaced with streamlined experiences that consistently rank highest against peers in usability studies
The tools deliver a wealth of information to students' through an engrossing interactive experience, which influences many users to consider RMIT as their ‘educator of choice’
Good Design Award Winner 2021 (ATAR Finder)
How it was done
Contextual interviews with users and information centre staff
Three-week discovery and research sprint to gather user insights and develop design hypotheses
Moderated ideation workshops led by a team of product and experience designers and education subject matter experts
Validated proof of concepts, de-risking decision-making and investment for RMIT
Built using modern and progressive JavaScript frameworks including Vue and React
RMIT University is a global university of technology, design and enterprise.
In collaboration with the RMIT Experience labs, Prime Motive led a multidisciplinary team of subject-matter experts from education, accessibility, design and technology to create a series of modern web-applications that put the power back in students’ hands at the pivotal time of choosing their pathway into higher education.
Confusion and ambiguity on both sides of the conversation
Prime Motive undertook a phase of audience research to understand the nature of the challenges students and families were encountering as they made the jump from school into higher education.
A three-week sprint of contextual interviews was conducted with school leavers and call centre staff. The team identified key student challenges and learnt about the barriers faced by staff as they sorted through hundreds of decentralised documents when looking to provide families and students with support.
Following the sessions, the team synthesised all data and detailed key sentiments. These were grouped to develop key themes, with organised key insights under each theme.
Insights gathered were translated into a problem statement — how can we best empower students and their families to confidently make decisions regarding their first steps into higher education?
Low fidelity personas and lean ideation sessions
Through the insights gathered in the research sprint, the team developed a number of proto-personas and visualised their journeys into engagement stories. To stay lean, the personas and stories were documented in a low-fidelity fashion. This served the purpose of the project and helped keep the team focused on project outcomes. With the design toolkit at hand, a number of ideation sessions took place. Each session enabled us to conceive the types of tools, systems and information structures which could help satisfy the challenges faced by the audience, both internally and externally.
Learning and evolving through paper
The ideation sessions yielded a number of strong concepts that were developed into multiple paper prototypes of varying fidelity. The paper prototypes ranged from information documents, mobile applications and birds-eye views of live experiences. Paper prototyping gave the team the flexibility to evolve concepts in minutes.
Through a user validation phase, the prototypes helped students to understand their study options as well as how they could seek help and experience how interactions would play out the information provided.
A second round of testing focused on fewer prototypes but developed deeper insights. Content comprehension, subject matter clarity and interaction journeys were vetted and discussed with users. The insights gathered allowed the team to further narrow desired functionality, content structure and features. The final chosen concepts also served as a functional blueprint for a PoC (proof of concept) build.
Straightforward and simple answers
The team developed a clear yet comprehensive ATAR Course finder. This application helps students easily comprehend the available study options within RMIT based on their ATAR score. The tool allows students to explore potential courses based on their ATAR result, helps them understand course details and, importantly for many students, gives them alternative pathways into their degree of choice. The tool was built using a VUE development framework, making it lighting-fast which allows students to move through the data with precision and confidence.
Elevating a familiar brand through an engaging interaction design experience
The tools feature easy navigation and access to in-depth course information, with the content being broken down in a simple, digestible structure.
The team systematically worked through all courses and course types, streamlining a huge breadth of information into a consistent and succinct format. The platform algorithm then supported this revised course content, articulating and mapping pathways more accurately than ever before.
The tools function intuitively to the user and support the RMIT brand, creating avenues for conversations with a young audience excited about the next phase of their education. Interaction design was deliberately constructed in an instinctual way to encourage users to continue their journey deeper into the tools’ elements and repeat their engagement as many times are needed.
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