tackling university fees with HCD.
In November 2021, we worked on a project with the student fees team at a top university. The senior leaders responsible for improving customer experience had tried through past projects to address known issues for students impacted by the fees process and staff involved in the fees process; however, the project outcomes hadn’t been implemented.
The key staff had been in similar roles at the university for over a decade, and they had seen many failed attempts to address their concerns. So, the main challenge for our team was to engage this group of staff again and reassure them that their involvement would result in tangible, valuable changes.
We also wanted to involve students in the co-design process as they had not been comprehensively consulted in the past. The challenge here was the short timeframe we had to deliver the project, as students were busy with final exams and assessments.
feeling heard and ready to make changes.
The objectives set by the senior leaders included:
Significantly reducing the process steps and wait times for students impacted by the fees process, and,
Significantly reducing the process steps and workloads for staff to ease pressure on them.
Human-centred design is excellent at making people feel heard, so we used this approach to build trusting relationships with key staff members through meetings and in-depth interviews. We let them drive the conversation and talk through their frustrations, which we understood very well given our experience in higher education. This fact played an important part in these staff members seeing our team as ‘different’ to traditional consultants who had struggled to really understand where they were coming from.
Some of the key issues outlined were:
Strained relationships between different teams involved in the fees process, and a want for more collaboration
Concern around how to improve the overall student experience
Frustrations in regularly carrying out manual and inefficient processes that should be streamlined and have clearer policies
We also connected with as many students as possible, considering the short timeframes. We designed the research questions to understand how they engaged with the fees process, including pain points and emotional responses.
In these conversations, we learned:
There was not enough clear information about fees before enrolling, resulting in significantly higher fees than expected
There was immense financial pressure and stress on the students and their families
There were IT and systems issues
Communication from the university, in general, felt unclear
Interestingly, the university felt that they were communicating clearly, so there was a clear disconnect in this space, and many of these issues were not addressed in past projects.
workshopping our way to workable solutions.
Across three weeks, we spoke to 30 students and staff about their experience, which helped paint a clear picture that developed into five journey maps for different student and staff groups. These journey maps incorporated the high-level process steps, emotional responses at key points, and verbatim commentary to show the real lived experience of these people. We used this information to carry out a 3-day co-design workshop where the participants discussed the issues and possible improvements as a collective group.
One of the highlights of this project was the positive working relationships that developed between staff from different areas through the workshop. Seeing each other’s perspectives, pain points, and frustrations helped them connect and show empathy towards each other.
Guided by our team, the workshop participants presented their work to a large group of senior executives from across the university. It was extremely well received with positive feedback and encouragement to continue doing this work. Different areas were encouraged by what they had seen and inquired about undertaking similar projects for their departments.
The senior leaders responsible for our project will consider the recommendations provided and approve funding for a shortlist of prioritised initiatives to be implemented in 2022 — we can’t wait to see the result!
Human-centred design can help you understand how an individual experiences your product or service. It doesn’t matter if they are an external paying customer or an internal customer, such as a staff member — their lived experience has all the data you need to make their lives better!
