Designed the Student Experience for Studying Abroad to help Discover, Apply & Track Applications

Client:

MY ROLE:

Senior Product (UX/UI) Designer & User Research Specialist

WORKING WITH:

Lecturers, Students, Support Staff, Stakeholders & Developers

SECTORs:

Education, Travel

Date:

Jan ‘26

How might we understand the current state processes and larger ecosystem & identify future improvements for the Study Abroad Student Experience?

HMW help Students, Lecturers and Support Staff navigate the process of discovering options, applying and managing applications?

OVERVIEW

To improve the Student experience to make it easier to find program options, see requirements and apply. And for Lecturers and Support Staff’s processes to be improved to be less manual and time consuming.

Study at Monash Malaysia Campus Details page

With Over 150 + Study Abroad Program Options, finding the ones relevant to the students own needs is difficult currently

Stage 1: Discover

Problem Definition

Kick-Off Meeting

We begun by meeting to cover the brief and proposed timelines as well as the problem areas and what could be improved. To focus our time over the four month project.

Some notes on current state processes and project goals

Main Questions I had for the team (with answers) and documents to gather

Plan for the User Sessions key research demographic touch points

Project Brief

Here is a snippet of what was originally shared and agreed with the internal stakeholder team.

Existing Web Review

I began by walking through the current state journey from a Students Point of View, of all Digital Touch Points, covering discovery to application stages. Highlighting what can be improved (red post-its) and what’s working well (green post-its).

Web Journey review of key pages in flow (monash.edu)

Close up of Landing & Study in Australia pages review

Early Designs

To show how the existing site could be improved, I created re-designed screens focusing on solving the problems identified. This would form the basis of the Student Interviews Prototype Review later, when designs were evolved into a clickable prototype.

To solve the problem of confusion between Study Abroad and International Students studying in Australia

Stage 2: Define

Interviews, Workshops & Synthesis

Interview Sessions:

with Students

Next I created a list of questions to ask, reviewed with the team and finalised, which formed the base of the Interview Questions. The sessions ran for 1 hour, the first 30-40 mins for the conversational interview and the remaining time for the existing Web walk-through and Early Prototype review. Showing the prototype at the end to not add any bias to the web review.

Student session timings & activities running

The 4 Student types identified (Participants, Applicants, Explorers and Non-Starters) and questions set created for all

One of the Student Interviews & Test Sessions

Workshop Sessions:

with Lecturers & Support Staff

Next I hosted & facilitated 3 workshops and prepared the activities, created canvases and frameworks for the sessions. These were:

Faculty Workshop - 12 Lecturers x 1.5 hours
Support Staff Workshop - 10 Staff x 1.5 hours
Team Solutions Workshop - 3 Lecturers & 5 Staff x 2 hours

Faculty Workshop

12 Lecturers x 1.5 hours

Figjam whiteboarding tool used for the workshop

Key Learning insights slide created for the final playback presentation

Support Staff Workshop

10 Staff x 1.5 hours

Solution Mapping from the key problems identified

Team Solutions Exploration Workshop

3 Lecturers & 5 Staff x 2 hours

Synthesising the problems based on overarching groups & similar themes

Road Map of solutions based on Desirability to users (vertical axis) & Feasibility to build (horizontal axis)

Stage 3: Design

Visual Improvements

UX Problems explored within UI Design

From the Student feedback on the Existing Site and the Early Prototype, the designs were updated to reflect the learnings.

Information Sessions & Resources information page

International Monash Campus Details - Malaysia & Italy

Stage 4: Report

Insights & Recommendations

Research Insights Pack

Next we created a detailed presentation, covering the projects process, as well as Learnings, Recommendations, Outcomes, Future Scope & Designs created. Later I presented the findings to the key stakeholder and project team. The presentation is 80 pages long without appendix.

See some highlights of the deck below: