NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

Personalizing the Student Hub Experience.

The Northeastern University Student Hub is the central digital platform for students to access academic tools, manage campus life, and discover opportunities, serving as a critical touchpoint in their educational journey. The university's goal was to increase student engagement by personalizing the Student Hub. As the lead designer, I led the project's strategic direction from discovery to validation.

CLIENT

Northeastern University Information Technology Services

PROJECT TEAM

Jane Effanga
Reem Alsanea

YEAR

FALL 2023

INITIAL BRIEF & CONSTRAINTS

The initial directive was to leverage data from the university's existing Student Interest Survey to connect students with more relevant campus opportunities. The primary constraint was that any solution had to be feasible within the current technical infrastructure and implementable without a major overhaul

MY ROLE & CONTRIBUTIONS

As the lead designer, I drove the project's strategic direction from discovery to validation. My initial research revealed the core premise was unviable, leading to a strategic pivot. I then defined, designed, and delivered a new, user-controlled personalization strategy with high-fidelity prototypes, which successfully validated the concept's viability with students and secured stakeholder buy-in.

RESEARCH, DISCOVERY & INSIGHTS

Premise Validation

The goal of validating the premise was to determine if the existing Student Interest Survey was a viable signal and foundation for personalization .

Outcome

Technical Infeasibility

A technical assessment confirmed that the existing infrastructure could not support the complex data processing required to turn raw survey responses into reliable, real-time personalization signals.

Survey Fatigue & Low Signal

Survey Fatigue & Low Signal: Students expressed a general reluctance to participate in optional surveys. This meant any system relying on it would suffer from low participation and incomplete data, making effective personalization impossible.

Strategic Pivot

Initial research revealed that the relying on the survey was not a feasible path forward due to both student behavior and technical limitations. I presented a new direction to stakeholders and recommended a fundamental pivot. We reframed the core challenge from passively using existing data to actively empowering students to build their own experience.

Reframed Challenge:

How might we empower students to organically share their interests and, in doing so, build a scalable, user-driven personalization system?

User Research

I conducted interviews, focus group discussions and contextual inquiries to explore how students interact with the Hub, their personalization preferences, and effective methods for collecting and applying interest data to enhance engagement.

Key Findings

Control is Essential

Students expressed a strong desire for explicit control and autonomy over how their experience is personalized.

Simplicity is Paramount

Complex processes discourage engagement, any friction or complexity in the process was a major deterrent to engagement.

Interests are Dynamic

Students' academic and social interests evolve, requiring a flexible system they can easily update.

The Profile is the Hub

The student profile page was consistently identified as the most intuitive location for managing personal preferences.

From Insights to Principles

The research findings were synthesized into five core principles, serving as the guiding foundation for the design to ensure the final solution met user needs and project constraints.

SOLUTION

A multi-part system tagging system that allows students to select their interests from a categorized database. These interests, called "Interest Tags" are then used by the system to generate personalized recommendations for people, clubs, events, and resources across the Student Hub.

How it works...

Students select interest tags from a categorized database to add to their profile.

They can then choose their top five interest tags, referred to as "Top Tags," to signal their highest-priority interests

The system uses these tags to drive recommendations across the Hub.

All tags are easily editable, ensuring the system adapts to a student's evolving interests and preferences.

The 'Me' Page as the Personalization Hub

The student profile page, called "Me Page" was redesigned to be the central control panel for personalization. It now includes a new "My Interest Tags" module and a prominent "My Top Tags" section, giving students a clear overview and easy access to manage the interests shaping their experience.

Before

After

Interest Selection Interface

Designed a simple, intuitive, single-page interface where students can browse, select, and manage all their interests without leaving the page. This centralized management system streamlines the entire process.

USER TESTING & ITERATION

A key focus of user testing was the "Interest Selection Interface," as its usability was critical for adoption. Testing revealed some key drawbacks with this design.

Slow Navigation: Users found switching between the main menu and sub-pages tedious.
No Overview: Students couldn't see all their selected interests in one place.
Frustrating to Edit: Changing selections was annoying because users had to go back into each category.

Design iteration

Based on user feedback, the design was updated to keep all categories and selections visible and editable on one screen.

LEARNINGS & TAKEAWAYS

Explicit control trumps automation. Users felt more engaged and comfortable when they had transparent control over their personalization data, rather than having the system guess.

The pivot was the win. Using research to invalidate our initial premise saved significant time and resources, leading to a far more user-centric product.

Show, don't tell, to get buy-in. An interactive prototype was infinitely more effective than static mockups. It made the concept tangible for stakeholders and accelerated decision-making.