Appointment Scheduler
About the Project
This project is focused on enhancing the student and advisor experience, empowering both to book their advising appointment on a simple, easy-to-use platform.
This application is designed to help facilitate interactions and provide the ability to make appointments with students.
Timeline
April - November, 2019
Role
User Experience Designer
THE PROBLEM
Students often faced problems in finding their assigned advisors, meeting with them regularly, and letting advisors assist them in progressing toward the appropriate degree.
Improve communication between students and advisors.
THE SOLUTION
Appointment Scheduler
A web application for students that displays their assigned advisors with availabilities and a simple one click form to make appointment with the advisor.
Design Process
TARGET AUDIENCE
Who are the users?
Students are the primary users of the appointment scheduling system.
Through this system, students leverage their advising community and the way advisors can manage their student interactions.
The administrative side was managed by Advisors and staff to set up their availabilities on the calendar, create notes, manage queues, and much more.
Advisors work with a variety of students from a variety of backgrounds and throughout a student’s time at the university.
They played a key role in data gathering and concept testing.
USER RESEARCH
Interviews & Empathy Mapping
I conducted a few interviews along with empathy mapping sessions with a few students to understand their experience with the advisors and the challenges they face. It helped to identify opportunities to solve the problem.
Questions were asked/ probed during the empathy mapping session to understand student needs and their expectations from their advisors as well as their emotions and feelings.
Journey Mapping
Journey Mapping session was conducted to understand how students interacted with their Advisors and identify various pain points at each of their interaction points.
Surveys
Our team conducted a survey across campus about advisor interaction with students. The data informed the research activity and helped with the ideation.
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Understanding the Users
After conducting interviews, empathy mapping, and journey mapping, I had a good understanding of the user needs, technology usage, and pain points of the students.
Key insights:
Students were unaware of their assigned advisors and would often make appointments with the wrong advisor.
Students usually missed their appointments.
Very little or no communication after meeting with the Advisor.
Students, when unable to find availability on their Advisor’s calendar felt a lack of trust.
Long wait while waiting for Walk-in meetings.
Task Flow Diagram
The task flow diagram helped to identify the steps for making appointments.
BRAINSTORMING
Initial Sketches
Initial sketches helped me visualize the solution and quickly take it to the team for discussion and ideation.
DEFINING PATTERNS
Design pattern was adapted from the University branding guidelines and color palette.
HIGH FIDELITY DESIGN
Visual Design
High fidelity visual design was made using Sketch and Invision. These visuals were used as a reference for building the solution by the developer team. These were also used for Design reviews for the Advisors and Student Groups.
KEY FEATURES
Assigned Advisors
All the assigned advisors are displayed in an order of student interacts with them. Students can quickly view their future appointments and past notes from their advisors.
Simple Appointment form
A form that is filled with important information already helps student quickly make an appointment with the advisors
Simple Appointment form
A form that is filled with important information already helps student quickly make an appointment with the advisors
Viewing Availability
Advisor’s availabilities are displayed on a calendar that gives them flexibility to see in day, week or month views. In addition to appointment, student can also view drop-in hours on the calendar.
Mobile responsive solution
Screens are designed to be viewed on all devices so that students make appointments on the go.
PROTOTYPE
Final Design
Final click-through prototype was made in Axure for usability testing with the users.
CONCLUSION
Overall Impact
The application is currently being used by Advisors and their students, 48.3K+ appointments(Based on 2020 Annual Report) are made across colleges and departments. Students are finding the tool simple to use and straightforward.
This tool is helping build a positive relationship between students and advisors that will help in student retention as well as students’ successful completion of college degrees.
DISCUSSION POINTS
Additional Activities
There were additional activities done as a part of this project:
Admin side of the project where Advisors set up their calendar with different types of availabilities and relevant student population.
Usability Study with the students.
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