Macquarie University
Creating an interactive onboarding experience for new staff to increase desirability of the experience by 9%
Client
Macquarie University, Sydney
Role
UX Researcher, UX & UI Designer
Team
18 Designers
Timeframe
3 weeks
Mainly involved in
Desktop research, survey, 1:1 interview, competitor analysis, data synthesis, affinity mapping, journey mapping, ideation workshop, wireframing, and prototyping
Project
Background
Service Connect is a newly developed service at Macquarie university.
Through an internal survey conducted by the university, it is discovered that students are not fully satisfied with the service offered by frontline staff, who are mainly casual staff. The staff feels that the training and onboarding did not prepare them to provide exceptional service to students and they lack confidence in the role. Additionally, they are heavily dependent on a OneNote document to find relevant information for students and find it to be boring.
Project
Objective
Investigate the onboarding and learning experience of Service Connect staff to build capability and improve the experience for students.
Problem
Statement
Based on the project brief and initial research, I drafted the problem statement. "Service Connect staff at Macquarie University feel overwhelmed and confused when finding the right information for students. They want to be able to provide a better customer service experience but believe their onboarding and learning journey did not engage or prepare them for the job".
Process
In order to investigate the onboarding process for frontline staff, we followed Double Diamond.
Discover
We wanted to understand the purpose of onboarding and training for casual staff and what they and the management staff felt about it. We conducted desktop research, competitor analysis, survey, and interviews to analyze onboarding processes.
Desktop
Research
Our team researched innovative practices that are used across different customer-centered organizations. Some of the innovative practices that are in use to improve onboarding are:
Competitor
Analysis
I took the responsibility to analyze Deakin University's student service platform.
Survey
Insights from the survey already conducted by MQ in May 2022:
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The staff wants more time to engage with the provided training material
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The staff wants prior access to material in order to be more engaging during the training session.
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The staff mentioned that it is hard to retain their experience while on buddy shifts if they are not consistently taken place closer together.
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During the onboarding process, a team introduction would help promote relationships between SL and management with new staff members.
I drafted a survey to understand students' perspectives towards Service Connect but after discussing with the client, we realized that the focus should be on frontline staff only as the underlying problem is with lack of training and interactive learning. We surveyed Service Connect staff members to understand how they felt about the induction and training experiences. We extracted the following insights.
1:1 interviews
We conducted 20 interviews including gorilla interviews on campus with service connect staff members.
Define
After all the research conducted so far, it was now time to gather the data and synthesize it. Based on the affinity map and empathy map, we identified 5 major key insights, which later led to formulating personas, and journey maps.
With these key insights, we created 2 personas; one identified as the frontline staff (Vicky) and another as management staff (Jennifer). I formulated their journies along with the other 2 teammates, which helped us to explore the pain points and opportunities. Throughout the project, we primarily focused on frontline staff as they are facing difficulty with onboarding and finding relevant information for students.
Meet Vicky - Frontline Staff
Vicky's Journey
Microscopic view of Vicky's journey
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The induction day is hard work. 3-4 hours staring at screens jam-packed with information and processes. It’s information overload.
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She retains very little from the day and doesn’t feel prepared for her first shift.
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Even though she is happy with the buddy shifts, she still doesn’t feel ready for her first solo enquires and often feels stressed before her shifts
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The system provided by the university is difficult to find information and it’s very easy to get lost in it too
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She loves the escalation process. it’s easier and quicker to ask a service lead than to try and find the answer herself.
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She feels overwhelmed when certain inquiries come through that she is not trained to answer for example academic queries.
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After 4 months into the role, she feels confident to answer any queries.
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But she is soon back into the stress zone when changes are introduced in the system.
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She wants an efficient way to provide feedback to her supervisor.
Develop
After the research, synthesizing the data and understanding Vicky's pain points, it's time to find the solutions.
We ideated through "How Might We" questions, by facilitating workshops. From the ideas, we created a storyboard followed by a user flow.
Ideation
I acted as a moderator and we organized 3 ideation workshops with our persona, who are Service Connect staff by asking the "How Might We" questions and guiding them to come up with as many ideas as possible. The questions:
With the generated ideas and concepts, we created an MVP matrix to analyze the most beneficial solutions for our persona. We focused on the below quick wins for designing the final solution.
Storyboard
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We created a storyboard to visualize our concept & overall journey of Vicky
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The new interactive tool helps frontline staff learn about the services in a fun and engaging manner.
User Flow
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We created a user flow that is easy to understand and navigate
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The staff can navigate the mentorship platform, access modules, track their learning, refer back to OneNote, and experience gamified learning through MQ Maze.
Deliver
During this stage, before jumping into the wireframes, we decided to propose a simple onboarding framework that Service Connect can adapt to ease the onboarding process. It demonstrates what a new recruit can expect pre-onboarding, during onboarding, and post-onboarding so that they feel confident in their respective roles.
This onboarding framework also shows how a new recruit can benefit from mentor groups and learning maps.
Mentorship
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A new staff member begins their journey at Service Connect and is placed in a Mentorship Group consisting of a Team Leader/Senior Officer, experienced staff members, and other new recruits.
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They stay on the same mentorship team until the next recruitment cycle.
Paper Wireframe
We developed the very first draft version of the concept that we had in mind for Vicky, this includes the introduction of the game elements, a leaderboard that encourages peer learning, a live battle trivia to compete in the understanding of content, and the design of the learning maze.
Mid-Fi Prototype
& Testing
I took the responsibility of mid-fi wireframing and prototyping along with a few more teammates and worked in rotational shifts. Along with overseeing the alignment and consistency, I particularly designed the infographic section.
14
Usability Tests
8.1/10
Desirability Score
Insights
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"This would make training much more interactive and therefore fun"
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"I think this could be an effective and more engaging training software that would allow new staff members to learn basic information"
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"Love this!! Really easy to navigate and has a lot of features that I think would have been super helpful to use during onboarding/training"
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"I liked how there was a mentor support section which appears to be a FAQ's section but for staff to use and ask questions"
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"I would be more inclined to complete ongoing training"
Pain Points
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Concerns staff would want to compete in battle trivia too regularly and not focus on their job tasks required
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Difficulty understanding where they were on learning map
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Practice inquiry activity had too many screens to complete a task
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"The home page was a little difficult to work out what I should be clicking next"
Hi-Fi Prototype
& Testing
I took the responsibility of hi-fi wireframing and prototyping along with a few more teammates and worked in rotational shifts. After 2 rounds of testing, we iterated the designs based on user feedback and increased the desirability of using the platform from 8 to 8.8.
18
Usability Tests
8.8/10
Desirability Score
Insights
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"This is more engaging than reading the Notebook and competition aspect also helps. 8/10.
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"I think this is a very fun way to learn so I'd enjoy using it. It definitely makes me want to complete learning more than reading text. 10/10"
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"It was pretty easy to use. I really enjoyed the games especially the live trivia! The animations were great as well! I would use this 9/10"
Key Takeaways
What I learnt
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The project was sprinted for 3 weeks; in this short duration, we had to arrange for surveys and interviews with frontline & management staff simultaneously and carry out the design process. It was daunting in the beginning but I learned that the right attitude and time management are the keys to the successful completion of the project.
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Due to various perspectives, we thought that we need to interview students and staff to thoroughly understand service connect but we soon pivoted our project scope to only focus on staff after discussing with the university. I learned to not be emotionally inclined towards ticking the box of following a process, it's the outcome that matters.
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It may seem like the clock is ticking and “nothing is been done yet” but I learned that the key is getting the foundations correct and spending a fair amount of time on research. Everything falls into place.
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I have always been a team player but it was my first time working with 18 designers. I improved how to work as one big team; by communicating, reporting, and seeking help whenever required. It was an absolute pleasure to know what other brilliant minds think.
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While working on this project, I was in India. The time difference and location did not bother my learning and involvement in the project. I learned that I can be a responsible team member irrespective of time and location.
If we had more time
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We would do further testing and iterations
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We would implement more modules in the solution to use as a reference tool
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We would Increase activity and engagement with mentorship groups
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We would work on creating a Management portal
Final Solution
Our final solution is aimed at providing an engaging experience with interactive learning tools, a mentorship group to support new staff, and a gamified learning map where frontline staff can participate in quizzes, and track their learning & knowledge. The solution helps them to familiarize themselves with various services & topics that are frequently enquired about by students & be confident in their roles as frontline staff.
