Challenge
Create personas that could be used across WGU to better understand students and create persona-centered products.
Process
• Interview 35 prospective students on goals and hurdles for going to online college
• Review data of 125,000 current students over the past 3 months
• Use 13 national data sources on college students' motivations and challenges
• Distilled data down to 12 unique personas with unique hurdles and goals to build products around
Create personas that could be used across WGU to better understand students and create persona-centered products.
Process
• Interview 35 prospective students on goals and hurdles for going to online college
• Review data of 125,000 current students over the past 3 months
• Use 13 national data sources on college students' motivations and challenges
• Distilled data down to 12 unique personas with unique hurdles and goals to build products around
Outcomes
• Built personas to align teams on real student needs.
• Integrated accessibility to drive empathetic design.
• Mapped user journeys to reveal pain points and opportunities.
• Built personas to align teams on real student needs.
• Integrated accessibility to drive empathetic design.
• Mapped user journeys to reveal pain points and opportunities.
Role
As the Lead UX Designer, I conducted UX research drawing on external sources and 35 student interviews, wrote content, and designed finalized templates to create an intuitive experience.
As the Lead UX Designer, I conducted UX research drawing on external sources and 35 student interviews, wrote content, and designed finalized templates to create an intuitive experience.
Personas
Researched, designed, and wrote 12 unique personas for the WGU UX and product team. Formed a template to showcase the persona with quotes to the right, highlighting the main goal and personality of the persona, details in the middle, and key takeaways on goals and hurdles on the right.
Journey Maps
Formed 12 journey maps to go along with the personas, emphasizing the pain points and successes for the students across the WGU journey, broken down into three main areas with sub-sections under each area for a more detailed experience.
Personas and Journey Map Templates
Created templates to allow other UX and Product team members to understand more easily how to read the files and set up new personas in the future. The template included an overall guide on templates, annotations for each area within the template, and components to be reused in the template.
