University of Phoenix students can use their work and life experiences to gain credit for school by submitting a PLA (Prior Learning Assessment) application.
UX Design
UI Design
Interaction Design
Students can potentially save thousands of tuition dollars by submitting their past work and life experiences for evaluation. The current process for submitting for PLA credit is unhelpful and confusing. A negative experience with this process can tarnish the students opinion of the University of Phoenix. We hoped to make it simple and painless for students to learn about PLA (Prior Learning Assessment), learn what may count as credit, and how they would complete and upload their submission.
Our primary users are current University of Phoenix students. These students range in age but are on average single, working parents within their 50s. Most of our students have a vast history of prior work and life experiences that would qualify them for PLA credit. These experiences range from past corporate trainings to parenting to yoga instructing and more.
I was the lead UX/UI designer working on this project. I worked alongside a UX Researcher, UX Copywriter, Product Manager, Product Owner and multiple stakeholders. I conducted multiple design thinking sessions, group collaborations, research debriefing sessions, and rapid working sessions.
I created user stories, user flows, wireframes, low-fidelity and high-fidelity designs for mobile and desktop. I also watched numerous full-story sessions and helped with the research plan.
As an MVP, we had a few restraints when delivering this project. We had limited development availability so we had to factor that in when creating our final designs. We were unable to create any complex tools that would allow a student to search through all available options for credit. We also worked as a fully remote team and had to adjust some of our sessions to accommodate time zones. While working in an agile scrum methodology, we had to deliver this product within 3 sprints of work which included time for our studies.
To kick-off this project, I conducted an initial discovery session with our UX researcher, UX copywriter, Product Managers, Product Owner, and Stakeholders. Within this session we carved out the timeline and requested deliverables.
We had a second workshop where we created a persona and scenario to empathize with the user as they navigate through applying for PLA. We applied the scenario and persona to create an empathy map and user journey map to help understand the user and their behavior.
After this session, I watched sessions of current users applying for PLA with the current process to discover pain points. I called out a few key insights that we could focus on.
After my initial discovery, I began to carve out personas, scenarios and user stories. Below is an example the main user story I created:
As a student, I want to gain credit for my work and life experiences so that I can save time and money.
I used the user story above to help guide the creation of my initial user flow seen below:
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After creating my user flow, I began to layout rough wireframes to get an idea of how this flow could come to life. After I began to lay things out within my wireframe, I realized there may not be a need to for a separate page to hold the "Next Steps". Below is an example of a low-fidelity wireframe based on the initial user flow.
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After reviewing the wireframe with my team and the stakeholders for the project, I began to develop the UI so we can have a higher fidelity prototype to test with our participants. We tested the design with 5 different participants, ranging from ages 19 to 50, in individual 60 minute semi-structured interviews. During these interviews, we created rapid iterations based on user feedback to gain as much valuable insight as possible.
Our key insights from our user studies were:
1.) Although all students welcomed the idea of getting credit for work and life experience, three who had engaged with PLA in the past indicated there were strong pain points within the old process that damaged their opinion of PLA in general.
2.) Many students recalled seeing an email about PLA but did not act on it.
3.) Students expected to find PLA through their Academic Plan within the student portal
4.) There was less confusion on how to apply for PLA credit within this study than the past study but there was still opportunity for improvement.
5.) The main user pain points occurred within the "How do I apply" section.
After conversations with the UX researcher, stakeholders and other teammates, I began to use our findings to create a new user flow that tried to solve for our user's main pain points (below)
I updated our prototype to be more upfront about necessary qualifications. We included a prominent path to this page within Academic Plan. We broke down the process further to help guide students through the process. I included jump-links within the design to help make it easier for the users to navigate through the content. I also included more direct callouts to excite the users about the possibilities PLA may hold for them. Within the study we learned that calling out specific examples of potential credit opportunities can help the students brainstorm ideas of what they might have accomplished that may qualify.
We removed the submission process to its own individual area, because during the study we learned that students would come to this page to learn about how to submit for PLA, then complete the application, and then return to upload.
Below is a mockup of the final main page I created:
We learned how important it is for us to be upfront about how vigorous this process can be. Students are willing to put in a reasonable amount of work within the application in order to eventual save more time and money overall, but they do not want to be blindsided about it.
Since this was an MVP, we were unable to develop any complex tools that would eliminate the need for students to download templates or view large PDFs. In a future iteration, I have recommended a fully guided process and a search tool that allows students access to all potential topics at once.
Overall, this project was a success and students that saw our designs couldn't wait for it to be live within their student portal.
Link to prototype:
https://preview.uxpin.com/e21a666927812a3c447403aad316482a2d167f8f#/pages/137316529
