WPI: The First Year Experience

Client: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Project: Art Direction, User Experience, User Interface Design
Collateral: Responsive Microsite
Platform: Wordpress

During the summer months, WPI's newly-enrolled students have several tasks and deadlines to complete before arriving on campus; tasks including math placement tests, account creations, housing selection, and course registration. The process was very confusing and frustrating, resulting in two staff members and one student worker inundated with phone calls and emails from families needing assistance as well as several complaints received from parents during the Orientation process feedback.

For several months, I worked directly with the campus client's Marketing Manager to untangle and streamline this process through a very simple but intuitive user experience that comfortably guides the students through their checklists and provides suggestions of assistance when relevant. Some examples of these UXUI elements include breaking the task lists into months, then into categories with associated colors and icons such as "Academics", "Housing & Dining", and "Health Services" as well as bottom-of-the-page menus that guide you along, showing where you are in the process.

We also broke down the course registration process to 6 steps that load relevant information when touched or clicked, all on one page, along with video tutorials for each step. Lastly, we added a quick email submission form to the footer of each page, asking simply "Need Some Help?".

The microsite and its focused, simple user experience proved incredibly successful, garnering much praise from families during the Orientation process who made a point to exclaim to Orientation leaders and volunteers how impressed they were with the ease of execution and how the process was "such a breeze" compared to other universities.

The owners of the microsite, the Office of the First Year in the Undergraduate Studies department, who were used to employing at least a couple of student workers during the summer to help with phone calls and confused incoming students, found that the emails and phone calls needing assistance nearly dried up completely and made their need for temporary help unnecessary within weeks of the site's launch and promotion.

Iconography: Melissa Arndt

Award:
2015 Education Digital Marketing Awards - Silver