GradUp
Background: Final/Client Project, General Assembly UXDI
UX Team: Myself, Derek Mohr, Emma Steiber
My Role: UX Researcher, UX designer, Visual designer
Skills: Research, interviews, affinity mapping, design strategy, graphic design/visual aids, storyboard
Tools: Pen/paper, Sketch, Mural
Duration: 2.5 weeks
The Challenge: Work with client to create a design to connect high school students to their future through their desired interests and skills. Seamlessly navigate first generation college students, while in high school, through the college application process and beyond, and provide extra support needed by these students.
Solution: Our team researched and designed from the ground up. GradUp is a team/mentorship program consisting of a high school student, a college student, and a professional. We conducted a thorough investigation through secondary research and user research; interviews with first generation high school and college students, guidance/college counselors and teachers.
Even when presenting academic credentials and a level of academic motivation equal to that of their peers whose parents graduated from college, first-generation students are at a somewhat greater risk of being academically, socially, and economically left behind.- Pascarella, et al., 2004
The Challenge
Children of college-educated parents are much more likely to pursue and complete an undergraduate degree than are young people whose parents did not attend college. -National Center for Education Statistics
The Client
Catrina, a first generation college student herself, and a graduate of the University of Michigan, came to us wanting to give back. She had been a part of a mentoring program in high school, and wanted to help high school students with the college discovery and application process, as well as supporting them staying in school and finishing their degree.
Research — Exploration
We began by performing a competitive analysis of existing platforms and programs, creating a business model canvas, a diagram of the school ecosystem and market position maps.
Moving forward we needed to investigate and take into consideration:
1) Current gaps that exist within competing platforms
2) The challenges first generation college students face
3) How these challenges are currently being tackled
Research — Interviews
The Insights
Armed with these insights, we decided the solution should…
From here we gathered for several brainstorming sessions to decide out how to move forward. We conducted a design studio, explored many ideas, and returned to the drawing board more than a few times. We were finding feasible solutions for the college application process itself (another edtech platform?) and explored ideas for discovering interests and possible future career paths (career/interest finders?), but a unifying and underlying theme was glaring, and was the thread that wove this complex issue together… how to keep the student fully engaged every step of the way.
What better way to ensure student engagement than other people acting as support, advocates and mentors? Interestingly enough we had come full circle, as our client Catrina was part of a mentorship program herself in high school, and attributes much of her success to that program.
Our Solution
Because our final idea ended up as a service design solution, we decided to focus on the program itself and what the framework would look like, instead of creating a digital component (although we did create a simple prototype for a website, the onboarding process, and a dashboard. See below).
As we started developing the program, we realized that a ‘cohort’ or team model would be ideal. That way, while the focus would be on the high school member, there would also be a college level member as well as a member who was the adult or, ‘professional’. The team would consist of
- A high school student, starting their freshman year
- A college student, who ideally had already gone through the program as the high school student, and
- A professional. An adult member who would lead the way, and who also had gone through the program as the high school and college members
A Digital Component
Eventually a digital component will be developed to help support the program. A simple prototype was created as an example for the GradUp website, the onboarding process, and a sample dashboard.
