Seamless transfers to dream institutions
🗓️ Transfer Calendar
TIMELINE—
July - October 2024
(with ongoing tweaks!)
ROLE—
Sole designer, researcher
TEAM—
1 designer (me!)
+ 1 team manager
+ 2 transfer office staff
+ 6 transfer advisors
TOOLS—
Concept3D Software
As a Web Designer at NOVA, I worked on many exciting short- and long-term projects, but one project I'm really excited about is the creation of the NOVA Transfer Calendar, a project I spearheaded from start to finish.
As the sole designer, I was responsible for planning out the user flow, information architecture, and prototypes from scratch. After the product launched, I also helped train a team of 10 calendar admins on how to use the calendar and reach an audience of 52,000 students across the NOVA region.
Context
What is NOVA?
You might already know that NOVA means "Northern Virginia."
But NOVA is also a community college that has 6 physical campuses and 52,000 students across the region. NOVA offers 2-year degrees, and most students transfer out of the college into 4-year institutions to continue their educational career.
Since most students are looking to transfer out, the Office of Academic Affairs wanted to devise a solution to convey Transfer-related information better to prospective students.
Problem
Many events, very little organization
The Transfer Calendar has two core user groups:
- Students, who are looking to transfer.
- Advisors and University Representatives, who are looking to advertise their events.
Students should not be confused on how to transfer. Faculty and recruiters should not worry about attracting students to their events.
The existing solution did the job, sure, but it wasn’t organized or exciting. Let's change that.
Research
Existing solution
The previous solution was hosted on a WordPress as a blog, which had a navigation bar with several tabs, and multiple pages. The font style and color was hard to read. It was organized but overwhelming.
Pain Points
# 1 - Information Overload
On the previous site, information was listed without formatting beyond bolding and italicizing a few words. Advisors did not have time to do more beyond this.
This solution is serviceable for 1 or 2 events, but when it is 10+ events occurring at different dates, times, campuses, the information tended to get visually cluttered. It was hard to focus on a single event, and this led to the user, the student, getting confused and overwhelmed.
Moreover, this solution did not allow for images or flyers to be posted in a way that doesn't take up more space/scroll time.
# 2 - Lack of Record Keeping
The previous solution allowed for links to be posted to register. However, unless a student registers, there was no other way for the advisor/event organizer to capture interest. There was no clear call-to-action or page tracking.
If it was an in-person event with no registration link, an event organizer could only hope that students see the event and attend, and had to guesstimate the audience turnout.
A clear call to action could provide advisors a way to gather a user list to promote to, and students a way to stay connected with the event and set up reminders.
# 3 - Not interactive
While the previous website performed adequately on desktop, the mobile experience was less effective, with excessive scrolling that could deter engagement.
Recognizing that students have limited time and attention spans, the new solution needed to incorporate more vibrant colors, engaging visual elements, and improved content visibility to better capture and retain interest.
Goal
Simplify event promotion across the college
In a nutshell, our goal is to help students find the information they need to successfully take the first step towards transferring to their dream university.
Our secondary goal is to make it easier for event managers/recruiters to advertise to students.
🪜 Organized hierarchy + 📲 Interactive solution + 🤩 Visually appealing!
Design Process
What are we working with?
As employee of NOVA, I am limited by the software licenses the College has purchased. It is not time- or financially-efficient to buy a software license for a single department’s calendar.
Our current software is Concept 3D, which is also used by colleges such as MIT. The idea is to make Concept3D work for us.
How has NOVA been using this software so far?
Challenges
The first prototype
The first round of iteration included making the Transfer calendar as a place. This quickly did not work out because there were so many irrelevant fields we could not get rid of so the solution looked bare and incomplete.
Filtering by campus also was a problem since our solution was to add a link to each campus, and it just led to more clicks for the user.
Design Solution
#1 - Interactive
The new calendar portal allows the student to interact with the platform much more. They can now click on the address, enlarge the map for directions, follow a place to get reminders of all events at the location, and mark themselves as "Interested!" in an event and get event email reminders.
This makes the likelihood of event success and audience turnout much higher.
#2 - Interactive
The first round of iteration included making the Transfer calendar as a place. This quickly did not work out because there were so many irrelevant fields we could not get rid of so the solution looked bare and incomplete.
Filtering by campus also was a problem since our solution was to add a link to each campus, and it just led to more clicks for the user.
Challenges
Inability to reinvent the wheel
Limitations ⚠️
↳ Working with the software vendor the college already had a license with was the biggest challenge of this project, and it involved a steep learning curve!
Students are not our only users 💭
↳ Students are the target audience, but they are not only users. The advisors and other staff from the Transfer office had to get in and use the application. This meant making it easy for them to use as well.
Reflection
Choices and Impact
Accessibility 🌐
↳ The college has a wide age and demographic range of users. It was extremely important to keep accessibility in mind, since students have expressed an interest in mobile-solutions.
Keep Iterating 🔂
↳ Don't accept the first solution that works! Keep iterating, and trying to find better ways to solve the problem. It is worth the time and effort.
Self-sufficiency 💪🏼
↳ The product should be self-sufficient, i.e. the admins should be able to figure out how to use it without needing additional training. It should be simple enough to navigate.