Rose Keimig

challenge

Radical PhD, an online suite of dissertation resources, wanted to explore ways to enhance users’ awareness and continued engagement with their website.

Solution

I created annotated wireframes for five new features and layout updates based on results from a Kano Model Analysis and user journey maps.

Methods

• User Journey Map

• Rapid Prototyping

• Annotated Wireframes

• Kano Model Analysis

Tools

• Sketch

• Keynote

Deliverables

• User journey maps

• Annotated wireframes

radical phd

RadicalPhD is a web-based service offering tools for success to help graduate school students demystify the doctoral process.  In particular, they focus on addressing challenges felt by women, POCI community members, and LGBTQIA individuals who are historically and presently underrepresented and marginalized in academia. 

RadicalPhD provides guidance and support to PhD students through a set of flexible, customizable tools, including goal setting and dissertation planning templates, individual coaching services, and private messaging with other registered PhD students. Many of these tools are free, and can be adjusted as necessary to best serve the needs of the individual student. 

dissertation liberation

During the client interview, PhD founder, Dr. Aida, explained that they were looking to increase the visibility of their site and its unique approach. Radical PhD was about more than making students more productive, it was about transformational, holistic change that was intended to interrupt the academy’s one-way approach to graduate school.

Having recently emerged from the other side of an arduous doctoral journey, I was well-acquainted with the struggles of graduate school, and knew the value of a resource like Radical PhD and its compassionate coaches. In order to identify ways Radical PhD could better reach their audience, we constructed a user journey map. We were able to identify some pain points and particularly bumpy areas in the user journey where Radical PhD’s offerings may be especially effective in helping to smooth out that process and encourage a more balanced approach to this strenuous undertaking.

early prototypes

Based on the pain points and opportunity areas identified in user journey maps, our team developed a number of low-fidelity prototypes. We invited Dr. Aida and her developer to our studio to give estimates about the time budget for each design. 

Kano model analysis

Based on those results, we voted on eleven designs to send user testing. Using the Kano Model Analysis, we analyzed and plotted results from the test to determine users’ preferences.

Results from the Kano Model Analysis provided insight into user preferences for new features for Radical PhD’s website. Although consciously not a focus of RadicalPhD’s work, financial considerations are a major consideration for most graduate students, and Kano results led us to recommend devoting resources into clearly explaining pricing and increasing the number of free tools and resources. I individually created prototypes for a pricing page, a new landing page, video resources, a writing game, reach-out reminders, and a quizzes page. 

Part of Radical PhD mission statement is addressing “academic bumps,” and hopefully these proposed features will aid in that mission.  By engaging students through a range of activities across their journey, the extreme highs and lows can be transformed into a smoother process that produces happier, healthier, more balanced academics.

Annotated wireframes