UX Journey Map
PROJECT TYPE
UX Research, Empathy Interviews
STRATEGIES
TIMELINE
May 2023
Figma, Google Docs
TOOLS
OVERVIEW
Registering for classes? Stressful. 👎
Registering for classes can be immensely stress-inducing, unintuitive, and frustrating for university students, especially for Interactive Design majors (like me!). Our major is small and was created just a few years ago, so faculty is minimal and classes are scarce, yet more and more students continue to find and join our program.
In the Spring 2023 semester, I took a special topics class titled “Journey Maps”; the final capstone project was to create a physical, 9ft long UX journey map visualizing a user journey with any sort of product. My group and I created a map illustrating the IAD (Interactive Design) student registration journey with the end-goal being to show to our department leaders to raise further awareness for the lack of faculty, courses, and students graduating late due to these issues.
CONTEXT
Kennesaw State University’s Office of the Registrar utilizes OwlExpress for student registration. OwlExpress allows every student within the university to register for classes using this system. Additionally, within OwlExpress, students utilize different tools and resources that are integrated within the system such as the Registration tab which includes Class Schedule Search, Degreeworks, Registration Status, Time Ticket, and Display Class Schedule and Grades. Many students complain about OwlExpress being slow and outdated and express frustrations with the system.
Using OwlExpress 🦉
EMPATHY INTERVIEWS
Understanding the student experience 💡
Due to time restraints, we were tasked with conducting a few empathy interviews with other students in our class. We came up with 12 different interview questions that we thought would best help us understand students’ journey registering for classes:
What is your name and your major? Classification?
Why did you choose this program?
How long have you been a student at KSU?
Can you tell me about your experience registering for classes?
What words come to mind when you think about registering for classes at KSU?
What would be your ideal way or process for registering for classes?
What is your least favorite thing about the registration process
What do you like about OwlExpress?
Do you wish OwlExpress had different features, or had features in different locations?
What do you do when you encounter XYZ issue? (waitlist, hold, etc)
How do you go about fixing said issue?
Please walk us through your registration process on OwlExpress.
PERSONA
We interviewed three IAD students in our class. Based on their collective answers and processes, we created a persona, Cynthia, that represents the culmination of our research and would help guide the mapping of her journey.
The frustrated student 🖥️
FIGJAM IDEATION
After we completed our interviews, we moved to FigJam to begin fleshing out our map. We originally created 15 different steps our persona would take on their journey of registering for classes as an IAD major. We drew illustrations for each step as well as explained our persona’s actions, how they feel, and a possible quote. Planning out our map on FigJam first helped us move to the upscaled paper without much trouble and was incredibly beneficial in helping us be efficient with our limited time.
Let’s start mapping! 📝
THE FINISHED PROJECT
9ft of paper & the death of a marker later 🎨
After experimenting in FigJam, we moved to the upscaled paper and realized we had less room than we thought, so we omitted two steps and combined them with others. We decided to go for a techy, minimalistic design with few colors. While my group members and I split up most of the illustrations evenly, I was responsible for the emotive, moon-like faces ☻.
REFLECTING
Journey mapping is fun & insightful 🌱
This little project was awesome; it was my group and I’s first time drawing on something so upscaled. Physically drawing out graphics of each step in Cynthia’s registration process made it easier for us (and hopefully our department heads) to empathize with her journey.
Learnings
Students are very passionate about the registration process; no one wants to waste money by graduating late.
Although some of us were a bit awkward with drawing, illustrating emotions, steps, and actions helped us become a bit more comfortable with it.
9 feet of paper is a very large area, but we still had trouble fitting in every step in Cynthia’s journey.