NYUAD Student Portal

Overview
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Every semester, NYU Abu Dhabi students struggle to find a Housing Portal when applying for housing. After conducting a user testing, I made UX recommendations to make the housing portal more easily accessible to NYUAD students.

Project Type

Student Asisstantship

Deliverables

UX Recommendation

Skills

UX Research

Duration

Feb 2022 - Mar 2022

"How might we make the housing portal more accessible?"

User testing
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Methodology

I gave 8 students (2 students per each year) a simple task to, ‘apply for housing for the next semester’. All the participants were given with the student portal homepage, and they were observed in completing the tasks.

Results

On average it took 4 minutes for students to reach the right Housing Portal, where they can apply for housing at the city they will be studying at.

Two main user flows were identified:

1. Use Navigation Bar
Student Portal > Student Affairs > Residential Education > Student Housing > Apply > Continuing Student Housing > Housing Portal > Access Application

2. Use Search Box
Using the Search Box to search ( # housing #housing application #apply for housing), followed by Housing Portal > Access Application

Feedbacks

Among 7 out of 8 students expressed frustration that it is difficult to find NYUAD housing portal.

"There are too many links to click"

- Sophomore Student-

"I am a senior year student, and I still can't find it"

- Senior Student-

"I Hope the housing application was more accessible"

- First-year Student-

" I once applied to NYU New York Housing by mistake

- Junior Student-

PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

A link to the Housing Portal is too Invisible

Problem 1

The biggest issue was that to access Housing Portal from the Student Portal is hard to find and time-consuming. Even if a student uses the search bar function, they will be led to the step #4, student housing page, where students then need to click on multiple boxes and accordion lists to finally find a link to the housing portal.

Finding the CORRECT Housing Portal

Problem 2

NYU is a global university with campuses around the world including New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai. While each campus has a unique housing portal, the link on NYU Student Portal directs all students to NYU New York housing portal. Therefore, many students waste their time applying for NYU New York housing by accident.

SOLUTIONs

Reflection

OUTCOME

Once the UX recommendations were implemented, I conducted another user test to find out if the changes have improved the Housing Portal findability. On average, students spent 2 minutes less (from initially 4 minutes) to reach the Housing Portal from the Student Portal.
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TALKING TO THE STAKEHOLDERS
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To execute this UX recommendations, I had to meet many stakeholders including the director of the Residential Education team, the web-content manager, and the developers. By presenting the problem supported by the data from the user test, and visualising solutions using mockups, I was able to convince the stakeholders and implement the changes swiftly.