Student Hub
Client
Centennial College
Role
Content Designer /UX Researcher
Team
Pateel Bedoyan, Juhi Chakraverty, Simon Chen, Tee Kundu
Type
Website
Duration
4 months (Jan 2021 - April 2021)
Tools Used
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Google Forms
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Figma
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Invision
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Google Slides
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Google Spreadsheets
Results
The Student Hub has an effective content strategy that will be able to cover all of its target audiences. As well as, a new menu structure for easier navigation.
Backstory
Centennial College just had its 50th anniversary and to celebrate, they were planning on doing a complete redesign of their website. This school relies heavily on attracting international students from all over the world to come to the college for post-secondary education. They have a section on their website called the “Student Hub” page and this page is supposed to act as a “one-stop” shop for all students (domestic & international) to learn new updates regarding activities on their campuses, financial aid information and especially orientation information. They also wanted to appeal to indigenous students by creating a section for them filled with event information, and scholarship information to create a virtual space online.
Lately, they’ve noticed that the student hub section of their website has a high bounce rate of students leaving the page or accessing the page via internal search and not through navigating the website menu to find it. A lot of the content on the student hub was inconsistent, leaving students confused and often leaving the website together to google search on their own.
Defining the Problem
The information architecture and content of the Student Hub section is confusing for students, especially international and indigenous students, who can't seem to find the particular result they're looking for on the website. This often leads to them leaving the site to use Google instead, resulting in the Student Hub losing clicks.
The Proposed Solution
Our proposed solution was to conduct a content audit of the current content in the Student Hub. Then, redesign the information architecture for the Student Hub section based on our findings from the audit. This would help the college better guide its students to the right places. We also wanted to create a content strategy implementation plan, outlining content guidelines including voice and tone. As well as, identify the missing gaps of content that the Student Hub is having trouble addressing.
The Approach
Our main goal was to increase reach to our target student audiences, improve the overall experience of the Student Hub for all users and make this a crucial online resource for students to utilize during their academic year. In doing so, we hope the Student Hub will become a valuable tool that enhances the on-campus experience of students.
The first course of action my team did, was to conduct a competitive analysis, comparing Centennial College to its direct competition, which was other local colleges in Toronto.
To summarize, we found that Centennial College's Student Hub actually had useful content on the pages that actually had content but, it just needed better organization. We also found that the Student Hub's voice and tone excelled amongst its competitors but, the Student Hub needed to improve on its ease of navigation as it was hard to navigate around the website at times. There was no clear guideline on how they wrote content on the platform. Since one of their target users was international students, they really excelled at having content for students new to Centennial College and new to studying in Canada. However, they lack having indigenous content for the indigenous section of their website, causing them to lose out on potential indigenous students.
The next step was to conduct a content audit, auditing the Student Hub's content in hopes to see where there was miscommunication.
Personas
Based on the research we collected, we created five personas based on Centennial College’s five student bodies (three of which they’re trying to appeal to): International, Domestic, Mature, and Students with Disabilities.
These personas helped us better understand the students of Centennial College. The survey helped us uncover students' main concerns with the college as well as with the student hub itself. What information were people not able to access from the student hub? What pages seemed redundant or unclear? These were some of the questions we asked students who were interviewed by us along with the survey.
We sketched a new information architecture based on our research and feedback on what would be the best way for students to better navigate their way throughout the website.
Journey Mapping
Using the student personas, we created goals that each student should be able to easily accomplish based on the new information architecture. With these goals, we created a journey that takes the student to their ideal goal successfully. Our Journey maps helped us feel confident that the new IA would be very effective once implemented.
Voice and Tone
As it will probably be one of the first pages students will visit, the Student Hub needs to adopt a welcoming voice, as many students will be looking to it as a place to get all of the latest information for students happening on and off-campus. All content should be written in a clear voice that guides the user to the right information.
The tone of the Student Hub should be welcoming, helpful and informative where appropriate. This is important to reassure students that they attend a school that is just as excited to have them as they are to be here.
Content Guidelines
We created a set of content guidelines that would ensure that the content throughout the student hub is consistent and easy to consume by current and potential incoming students.
These guidelines will help the student hub properly convey information to the user and keep users engaged with the platform.
Conversations
Content is a conversation, is the creation of content in a way that is engaging and natural as if the user is having a conversation with the website.
In the case of the Student Hub, we want:
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To provide students with the resources they need
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Point them in the right direction to find the resources they need
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The voice and tone to be welcoming, clear, and helpful
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To reassure students that they attend a school that is just as excited to have them as they are to be here.
We also suggested potential “conversations” that these five student groups may have with the website. These conversations will help the website navigate the appropriate content for that student.
We used a formula that will help Centennial’s Student Hub create these “conversations” easily:
“If my purpose is to [complete a task].
The content I will need is [Required Content] because [Rationale].”
This formula will help the website direct students to the right sections of the student hub to obtain their goals.
Recommendations
For the Student Hub's recommendations, we recommended that they work on two of the most major issues on their platform: structure organization and content curation.
For the structure, we recommended that the Student Hub:
Merge the Student Life section with the Student Hub: When the Student Hub was created, the Student Life was already in place at the college. A lot of the information in the Student Life section was the same as the Student Hub, and because the Student Hub wasn't visibly noticeable on the platform, many students went to Student Life. So it's best to merge the two sections to create visibility for the Student Hub section of the platform and to cover all information that may be missing in both sections.
Reduce the number of layers/sections in the homepage section to improve clarity and reduce scroll time: The homepage was filled with a lot of information and made the homepage an infinite scroll. This sometimes may leave incoming students confused and frustrated before they even reach the bottom of the platform, causing them to bounce from the page to a search engine where they can just search and find their answer that way. With the sections reduced, students will be able to complete their tasks quickly without much confusion.
Separate SaGE and International Students Sections: Somewhere along the way Centennial's Student Hub merged the section for the International Students with information for students who want to do a foreign exchange. This causes a lot of confusion for international students looking for information about Canada to move here smoothly to pursue their studies at the college. This also provides confusion for domestic students who are looking to do a year of foreign exchange with partnering schools. Separating them and giving each other their respective sections will make navigating the student hub section much easier.
Improve the Student Hub's section's accessibility for disabled students: The website was facing quite a few accessibility issues that would make this platform hard to access and read with a screenreader. We encouraged the Student Hub to take some time to do some user testing with the new information architecture and especially with students who need accessibility tools.
For the content, we recommended that the Student Hub:
Create meaningful content for marginalized communities at the college: The beauty of having a college right in the heart of Toronto is the opportunity to have students from all walks of life. Marginalized students should be able to read content on the platform that pertains to them, this is especially for the Indigenous, LGBTQ2IA+ and Black communities that attend the college. This also includes creating a more personable and modernized indigenous section that is actively being updated with news within the community pertaining to the college or the City of Toronto.
Add more information to the events section: A title and date aren't enough to attract students to the school's events. Adding a description that includes target audience ie: First Year, International Students etc., times and who's organizing as well is very important and will help students find the right events for them to attend.
Maintain Consistency of the content being posted across the platform: Some pages of content on the SH section are filled with useful information, and some pages, not so much. With the content guidelines and voice and tone guidelines provided the school should make sure the content is consistent across the platform.
Reflection
This was my first project and was the first time I've used the skills I've learned throughout my semester on a real client project.
I know there were more ways to improve the Student Hub section of Centennial College's website, I also wish I had a chance to design a webpage for them as we initially mentioned it in scope but the client took it out last minute. If I could make some changes I would probably interview more indigenous students to get a very accurate description of what they would like to see in their sections and send that as a recommendation to the Student hub.
Overall, I'm happy with the recommendations we presented to the Student Hub and recently got to view some of the changes implemented. I believe the Student Hub is on the right track to properly representing all of its student target audiences in one cohesive space.