Case Study: NYULink
Earlier in the semester of the Service Design Innovation course, we learned about the methodologies and tools that could be used for creating a service and how to critically analyze an existing or potential service. However, now, with all of this knowledge in mind, we had an important task: create a sustainable and scalable service that satisfies a current need.
To accomplish this task, initially, my group (Melchior, Sakshi, Vida) and I brainstormed and listed out general areas where we would be interested in creating a service in (ex. Education, Mental Health, etc.) on a shared Google Doc. After, we added subcategories to each and listed out the observable problems in each field. For example, under Mental Health, an issue we listed was ‘anonymity and cost effectiveness’. After doing this, we noticed that the categories “Education” and “Mental Health” had the most problems listed underneath them. Therefore, we decided to combine the two categories and discuss further. We started sharing our unique experiences as NYU students and realized that there was a huge need for better mental health and overall guidance for students in higher education.
Despite all of us attending different schools and being enrolled in different majors, we all had one thing in common: a relationship with an academic advisor, whether it be good or bad. Melchior and I had very good relationships with our advisors and viewed our student-advisor connections relatively positively. Whereas, Vida and Sakshi shared that they were not too close with their advisors and wished that they were able to have a deeper relationship with them. After noticing the stark contrasts in our four student-advisor stories alone, we decided to choose this problem to tackle for our semester project. And keeping in mind that students typically only have one advisor who advises them with their academics and registration, we asked the How Might We statement, “How might we create a collaborative service that allows students and advisors to broaden their network and deepen their connections?”
In order to answer this question, we first decided to conduct some research to make sure that this was an actual problem for many others and to validate our assumptions. For research, we created two Typeform surveys to collect responses from interviewees and to help us gain a full picture of the student-advisor relationship at NYU, one for students and one for advisors.
For the student survey, some of the questions we asked were:
Briefly describe the relationship you have with your advisor.
What is the primary reason for seeing your advisor?
a) School and signing up for classes
b) Career goals (Internship and Job Opportunities)
c) Personal Issues (Family Matters, Mental Health, etc.)
Do you feel comfortable going to your advisor for non-school/non-career related issues (Yes/No)?
Would you prefer to have one advisor for everything or multiple advisors specialized in different areas?
For the advisor survey, some of the questions we asked were:
How long have you been an advisor at NYU?
Are there any areas or topics that you shy away from when advising your students?
How do you feel about your relationship with your advisee(s)? How many advisee(s) do you have?
Are there any resources or services that would be helpful for you as an advisor?
In about a week or so that we had available to interview before prototyping, we were able to collect 14 student responses and 9 advisor responses (2 of which were live interviews). Overall, the student responses echoed those of our experiences and we were able to identify the main pain points of some students and advisors at NYU. To highlight the student and advisor perspectives, we created user personas to represent the general student and advisor.
For the student persona, we distilled and summarized our findings from the 14 student responses to generate a general NYU student by the name of Jane Kelly. For Jane, her pains included her relationship with her advisor being only surface level as well as feeling uncomfortable going to her advisor for areas besides classes. Her core needs included staying on track to graduate and having a good relationship with as well as receiving useful advice from her advisor. Essentially, ‘looking for an advisor who gives [her] advice. But most importantly, someone who cares about [her] well-being.’
For the advisor persona, similar to the student persona, we distilled and condensed the responses from the 9 advisor responses to create Dave Johnson. For Dave, his main pain point is having to advise too many students and not having enough time and resources to build a deep connection with all of them. His core needs include supporting his students as well as being detail oriented and responding to his students in a timely manner.
After creating and analyzing our student and advisor personas, we then decided to create our service: NYULink, A website directory that allows students to find and connect with advisors in the NYU Community who can guide and support them in their specific areas of need.
Next, to check if NYU Link could be a potentially useful service, we created student and advisor journey maps to make note of the priorities of each party. For the student journey map, key aspects included making sure that they were in full control and that they had a voice on the advisor selection process, making sure there was an easy and intuitive search engine to find faculty/advisors, and having all important information upfront and visible.
For the advisor journey map, key aspects included having the platform be flexible with varying times and schedules, having the platform be able to gather preliminary information as well as schedule meetings and appointments, and similar to the student journey map, having the entire student advisor selection process be simple and intuitive.
In addition to the Journey Maps, we also created blueprints that highlighted the touchpoints and emotions of the student and advisor. For the student, he or she would come across NYULink after being disappointed with other traditional networking platforms, connect with a mentor, receive useful advice as well as supportive relationship and feel satisfied with using the service. For the advisor, he or she would login to the platform, check for messages from students and appointment requests, meet up with students and offer the students relevant and useful guidance and help. We also created a Stakeholder map with three tiers (Users, Internal, External) to offer a glimpse into potential stakeholders of the service.
Using the insights gathered from our surveys, interviews, personas, journey maps, blueprints, and stakeholder map, we finally proceeded to create low and high fidelity wireframes for our service NYULink. For future goals and potential for growth for our service, we could add other NYU faculty and staff in addition to advisors such as NYU Health Center physicians and ultimately, if the service is successful, branch outside of the NYU community.
After our class presentation/service pitch, some of our classmates raised important comments and suggestions including that our search bar feature may be too confusing and intimidating for some students and there being concern around incentivizing usage of our service and encouraging the NYU community to actively engage with the service. Regarding the search bar feature, we would most likely keep it in our design for students who know what they want to look for. However, for the students who may not know what they want or what they want to look for, we could also add a few pre-listed categories or options for them to choose from. Regarding the incentivizing aspect, surprise awards or grants could potentially be given to faculty and/or departments to recognize them for their hard work and dedication.
Overall, creating NYULink with Melchior, Sakshi and Vida was a fun and wonderful experience. Given the nature of the course being completely remote, I expected it to be tough to meet with one another and collaborate on the artifacts for the project. However, all of my teammates were super responsive, responsible and flexible. Though we spent a majority of our time conducting research and not creating the prototype until essentially last minute, we were able to deliver a strong prototype for NYULink. Throughout the whole process, main challenges included finding the slot to meet for a long period of time as well as not starting the prototyping process early enough. Given all of our different personal lives and schedules, it was sometimes a struggle to find a time to meet. But, in the end, we were able to meet a few times and practice running through our final service pitch and presentation. Also, we also could have started prototyping sooner and added more intricate features to our clickable prototype.
From this experience, I’ve learned that teamwork really does make the dream work. Though it can be sometimes hard to accommodate different schedules and work with different personalities, there are also rewarding aspects when it comes to working in a team with others. Some of these include gaining diverse and interesting ideas that I would not have come up with myself, fun conversation, as well as learning about new skills and tools that can be used for a project.
