User experience research
Counselor Ambassador Campaign
A project to increase student success and retention in the time of the onset of the pandemic at Santa Monica College.
Project challenge
Problem
In summer 2020, SMC implemented the Starfish system as an Early Alert System to help with retention with all students, with the aim to reach out early before students get lost or before it goes too far. SMC has observed that there is low usage rates amongst students and faculty despite an initial marketing push.
Task
Our team was asked to understand the challenges facing the adoption of the GPS early alert system newly deployed at Santa Monica College, and to design a solution to help increase GPS usage rates to ultimately help student retention rate at the college.
Roles
Team was comprised of 4 members. I served as documentarian, recruiter, interviewer, and prototyper for this project.
Solution: Counselor Ambassador campaign
A still from the live tutorial video prototype
The Counselor Ambassador Campaign uses existing staff counselors to provide an introduction to the GPS system, destigmatize the act of seeking help to students, and put a human face and name to the solution.
Read the entire case study of the research and design process here. (14 pages)
Humanizing experience campaign
A project to increase student equity on campus at Santa Monica College.
Project Challenge
Problem
SMC has begun the process of creating a Student Equity Center on campus along with the framework for the center’s website, when they were interrupted by the COVID pandemic. Now, the temporary website is the only engagement with the SEC that students can access, and the committee sees the development of the center’s online site as an opportunity to build engagement ahead of the physical site’s planned launch in 2021.
Task
In 8 weeks: understand the needs of the SMC community around equity, and design a solution that takes into account existing resources of the college. The end goal is to help increase student participation in community events to ultimately help create an empowered student community at the college.
Roles
This project was achieved with a 3 person team.
I served as documentarian, recruiter, interviewer, project manager, pitch deck creator, presenter.
Solution
A slide depicting the system design proposal within the final pitch deck.
The Humanizing Experience Campaign uses the existing website content management system to provide an introduction to the equity center, help students participate in events remotely, and bring greater appreciation of Equity resources available to both current students as well as prospective students.
Read the entire case study of the research and design process here. (19 pages)