ASU’s digital enrollment guide

U.S. News & World Report has ranked Arizona State University (ASU) #1 in the U.S. for innovation and #2 for online undergraduate degree programs. Recently, they’ve partnered with companies like Starbucks, Uber and FedEx to offer employees the opportunity to earn their college degrees online with 100% or partial tuition coverage. However, enrolling in college can be intimidating, stressful and raise a lot of questions for potential students. Additionally, the influx of new students could become difficult for ASU’s enrollment team to manage. They needed a customizable digital experience that would feel personalized & address the needs of the students as well as provide all the reporting milestones necessary to manage enrollment.

core responsiblities

As the sole UX Designer, I led the discovery efforts with ASU stakeholders and conducted internal design sessions. I created wireframes and prototypes as well as wrote and managed on-screen content and voice over scripting. Additionally, I developed user testing plans, recruited participants, conducted 1:1 usability studies on the live product and presented findings.

My process

journey map activity

I created a journey map that included the different stages of the college application experience. I pre-wrote a list of potential assets an interested employee would be exposed to and what they might be doing at the time. I introduced the activity and put participants in the shoes of a new FedEx employee who recently heard about the education benefit. I divided them into small groups, assigned each one a stage and asked them to write what they might be thinking & feeling on post-its. Then, they added red & green dots to the low & high points. Finally, the groups presented their stage and we brainstormed ideas on how to address the low points and celebrate the high points in the experience.

persona building

I led the ASU stakeholders through a pseudo persona building activity where we discussed the potential user types that would likely take advantage of this education benefit. I created 3 rough persona templates and divided them into small groups to discuss each one’s demographics, behaviors, needs and frustrations. Each group presented their persona and then we jotted down ideas on how to address their needs & potential frustrations on post-its. Everyone had a chance to walk around and add checkmarks to the suggestions they agreed with.

The stakeholders named the personas and referred to them often as we continued our day-long discovery sessions. This interactive activity surfaced some great ideas while building stakeholder trust and collective buy-in.

flow diagram & Wireframing

We met as a team and mapped out rough flow diagrams on the whiteboard for each stage of the experience. I converted those rough sketches into digital flow diagrams using LucidChart for internal review and feedback.

I then used Sketch to create medium fidelity wireframes for each screen and built a clickable prototype in InVision to present our solution to the ASU stakeholders.