Work
Customer experience design to elevate alumni experience
University of Melbourne
In Brief
In Detail
Challenge
Identify how to increase alumni involvement in key programs, and enrich the alumni giving experience, through a better understanding of digital and non digital touch-points
Outcomes
Mapped user journeys and backend systems across three platforms with varying datasets into an integrated service blueprint as a single source of truth to support strategic business and technology initiatives
Made recommendations for improvements to five key moments that matter most to alumni across their lifecycle
Aligned stakeholders and subject matter experts across three departments on the direction of change to uplift alumni experience across the giving lifecycle
How it was done
Ethnographic research with target audience groups including a diverse set of alumni
Secondary research, documentation review and environment scan
Prototyped and tested improvements to the alumni experience
Created a comprehensive service blueprint
Extensive project team and subject matter expert engagement
The University of Melbourne is Australia’s top ranked University, with over 450,000 alumni living and working in more than 150 countries.
Prime Motive was engaged to provide customer experience design to elevate the service and user experience for this key group across two specific touch points - the alumni portal and alumni giving experience.
Surface and connect data sets to build evidence that supports decision making across departments and horizons
Presented with several comprehensive but often misaligned datasets, we worked to find commonalities between organisational and department strategies, technical requirements of an extensive program of transformation already underway, and the deep ethnographic research and alumni journeys already completed.
Working back and forth between these data sets in iterative cycles, we were able to find alignment and resolve conflicts where they emerged, leveraging engagement with subject matter experts, new research of best practice and comparable experiences, and our own knowledge integrating experience design and enterprise back end systems.
As an outcome of this phase, an extended alumni service blueprint went well beyond the surface level, to connect ethnographic research, clearly identify end-user needs and relevant business and technical requirements over two horizons.
We conducted viability and feasibility workshops with stakeholders and subject matter experts to explore the workability of recommended alumni experience improvements, mapping the various platforms and channels to each and creating a single point of view of the signature experience conducive to meeting alumni and university objectives. This enabled the prioritisation of two key areas for prototyping and evaluation.
Prototype and evaluate
Having prioritised two key areas of focus, drew on best practice research and knowledge to establish a series of low fidelity prototypes for testing.
We conducted new in-depth research, engaging a diverse set of alumni from across Australia to better understand their experience, including the motivations to accessing a digital experience at all. Bridging discovery and design, these remote interviews assessed how they performed tasks within the low fidelity prototypes, as well as their expectations, the norms and abilities they have based on other tasks, their emotional state and goals.
Recommend and share
This final phase integrated all prior research and engagement, bringing into focus a set of priority recommendations for improvements to five moments that matter most to alumni across the lifecycle. This ranged from proposed improvements to brand awareness, to greater accessibility and design enhancements, all of which were linked to qualitative and quantitative evidence gathered to date.
In development of a final report, we incorporated insights and recommendations, updated prototypes, and a single point of view of the technical, business and experience requirements across an alumni’s entire lifecycle of interactions with the university, packaged and presented directly to stakeholders with evidence to support decision making and development.
Karl SvacicDigital & Innovation Enterprise Architect, University of MelbourneThis was excellent work, delivered flawlessly and which greatly helped our advancement and alumni teams, thank you.”
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