Work
Strategic Design for a virtual Open Day experience to engage students amid the pandemic
RMIT University
In Brief
In Detail
Challenge
The context of coronavirus and its impact in Victoria was changing on a daily basis during key stages of planning and our strategic design team needed to wrap the right team around various scenario-planning challenges and work through ambiguity to find a clear path forward.
Once a compelling vision came together, our digital experience team needed to create a highly bespoke event experience across an 11 week timeline, whilst working remotely with RMIT design and technology teams for the first time.
Outcomes
RMIT’s first-ever digital Open Day event drew a record attendance of 50,000+ participants and enabled RMIT to continue nurturing relationships with them
A flexible modern, decoupled/headless technology build and serverless architecture to create a secure, state-of-the-art solution that has been used and adapted in years since
The project aligned 30+ stakeholders and solved an ambiguous and evolving challenge amid mass uncertainty — highlighting the results made possible using human-centred design and modern ways of working
How it was done
Fully-remote multidisciplinary team of 20+ aligned and engaged
Contextual research with school leavers and parents from across the country to gain empathy for the class of 2020 and their needs and desires
Shaped early concepts through co-design sessions; rapidly developed, tested and iterated in response to user feedback
Recommended a strategic direction and supported its endorsement
Leveraged the flexibility of modern, de-coupled/headless technology and serverless architecture
Each year in August, RMIT’s many campuses host tens of thousands of prospective students and their families at a number of ‘Open Days’. In early 2020, as the first of many COVID-19 health regulations and border closures came into force, the impossibility of the traditional on-campus, in-person event became clear.
In light of rapidly changing and ambiguous conditions RMIT approached Prime Motive to lead a strategic design sprint and subsequently implement a digital experience platform to drive student recruitment. Together, we delivered one of RMIT's most successful Open Day's ever.
Strategic design and co-design amidst a pandemic
Bringing user and industry research to life, our strategy team designed a series of fast-paced generative co-design activities.
Remote contextual research and testing helped us shape end-users needs and wants, creating an Open Day experience built on empathy for the rapidly changing home and school environments of the class of ’20.
Our researchers worked alongside the working group to find new possibilities, looking outward and drawing inspiration from industry trends. Leading examples of emerging technologies were analysed, the insights gathered unpinning our delivery.
This iterative and creative phase culminated in a series of workshops engaging the working group to co-design strategic possibilities. Together we ideated, tested and refined how to best meet the needs of students, RMIT and it’s partners.
Responsive scenario planning for delivery — an evolving user experience to adapt to the daily changes of a sector under stress
With Victoria’s business and education context changing on a daily basis, the advisory committee could only speculate on the severity of the pandemics’ impact on the University in 3-month windows, including the Open Day period.
During a critical time for decision making, the project team gathered user stories, requirements and constraints and provided the advisory committee multiple agile delivery roadmaps—which proved key inputs to RMIT’s scenario planning.
This scenario planning led to the University finding a completely digital Open Day experience mitigated the most risk, while also aligning with the strategic vision for a bespoke marketing and recruitment product identified in the Discovery phase.
Low-fidelity prototyping early in the project helped a growing number of stakeholders - responsible for producing the content experience in short timelines - visualise the digital Open Day concept. These low-fidelity prototypes were then tested with users, their feedback informing higher fidelity wireframes, which were then re-tested and iterated upon until reaching the final experience.
Exploring the RMIT campus through an illustrative map
Irrespective of global travel restrictions, prospective students and parents were still able to explore the RMIT City, Brunswick, Bundoora and Vietnam campuses. The RMIT Virtual Campus Map gave users a virtual tour through immersive 360 degree images and videos, so students knew what to expect when arriving at the real thing.
We designed the RMIT Virtual Campus Map to highlight key locations and services, creating beautiful illustrations that were representative of key features to be found in the physical space. Written content supported each location and the experiences available to prospective students.
Immersive, feature-rich, responsive and AAA accessible
Our multidisciplinary team of user experience, art direction, user interface, front/back end developers and content authors collaborated closely to produce an incredibly rich and immersive, yet functional and AAA accessibility compliant experience.
A key feature of the 2020 Open Day was the ‘Virtual Planner’ – which tailored to the user’s interests with recommendations of videos and information, suitable for use by both students and parents. For example; a prospective student who has flagged an interest in Engineering, could be prompted to virtually tour RMIT’s Advanced Manufacturing Precinct, or drop into a relevant information session with RMIT industry partners.
The completely digital Open Day event delivered all the experiences expected in it’s on-campus counterparts. Visitors were able to talk with current students, alumni, academics and support services throughout the whole weekend, and collect information about RMIT programs, student services, clubs, study tours and industry partners.
Alex HammondAssistant Director, Digital Engagement Experience, RMIT UniversityPrime Motive’s work prompted a significant and informed conversation about what direction we should take in such ambiguous and continuously evolving circumstances.”
Platform as a service — Secure, robust and high-performance technology
We built the RMIT Open Day experience using a modern platform as a service (PaaS), based on a managed container system, with integrated data services (i.e.: Salesforce) and hosted on serverless, scalable infrastructure. The final product and architecture was load tested to 50,000 concurrent users and penetration tested.
Our solution used emergent technology to capture user information which RMIT now use to nurture relationships with school leavers and their parents, and provide the best advice, guidance and experience for 2021 and beyond.
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