Ball State Unsung Heroes
Helping on-campus media outlets highlight a diverse range of Ball State students
Problem
Often, the Ball State students that gain public recognition are from the same small group of student leaders on campus. This project investigated how we might acknowledge those students who might not typically get public recognition for their accomplishments while being a student at BSU.
Solution
A nomination platform that allows the Ball State community to nominate students based on various criteria. Ball State marketing and news platforms can access this platform to gather information on potential student highlights and stories.
ROLE
UX Designer/Reseacher
CLIENT
Ball State University marketing and news platforms
DURATION
4 months
DELIVERABLES
UX Design, Web Design, User Testing, Prototyping
Understanding why campus platforms are falling short
Our first step in understanding why only a small group of students were highlighted was to talk directly to the media platforms that highlight students regularly. We conducted interviews with members of the university’s marketing and communications team, students in charge of campus news platforms, and department personnel who run BSU-affiliated social media. Our high-level findings include:
People in charge of highlighting students often get student names from academic advisors and other faculty. The students who are being suggested are often more involved on-campus or are high-achieving academically.
There is no set way for reporters and social media managers to find students to recognize on public platforms. Each department has its own separate way, which can cause overlap for which students are chosen.
There are no clear-cut nomination criteria that define what students should be highlighted. There were conflicting opinions from BSU faculty and staff on whether academic achievement should play a factor in public recognition.
Journey map depicting the current process for highlighting a student
Creating a process for students to gain recognition
With more context around the student highlighting process, the team got to work brainstorming possible solutions. Initially, the team conceptualized a platform to highlight students independently from other campus platforms. However, the team quickly realized that this would compete with existing platforms and wouldn’t truly solve the issue. We took a step back and conducted a group brainstorming session to assess the information we had gathered.
The group then decided that a platform to receive student nominations best addressed the needs of the marketing and media platform professionals at the University. This platform would be accessed by each department searching for students to highlight and would keep track of what students had already been acknowledged. We took this idea and began laying out the structure into an information architecture to nail down initial features.
Arriving at a solution
Initial information architecture of Unsung Heroes website
A central location for students to be nominated
The team began with a low-fidelity website prototype that allowed visitors to nominate students and view links to other students who had previously been nominated.
Home page and nomination form page from low-fidelity prototype
The initial prototype was a little too broad
Concept testing results showed that the nomination form wasn’t quite descriptive enough, and may not give media personnel enough information to choose students to recognize. Other feedback from initial testing found that the website needed more calls to action and context provided for visitors and potential nominators.
Refining the nomination form
We moved on to mid-fidelity prototypes that addressed the issues found in previous testing sessions. We included a more robust nomination form that asked for more information about the nominee, such as year in school, major, and to which media outlet to send the nomination.
Giving media personnel applicable information about nominees
However, when adding more fields, we went a bit too far in the other direction. Feedback from media personnel and student reporters stated that the nomination form fields weren’t helpful in deciding whether a student was worthy of recognition. We needed to include more fields that would help platforms tell a story about student nominees. Nominators were also worried that they wouldn’t be able to provide all of the information asked on the form such as nominee year, major, or photo.
Finalizing design and nomination form content
In the final designs, we refined the nomination form to include relevant fields that would help student reporters and campus social media and marketing individuals tell the stories of Ball State's unsung heroes. The final designs included a WordPress-style admin panel for users to keep track of nominations and what individuals have already been highlighted.
The final product is currently being implemented at the university. We hope to see an increase in student highlights and a more diverse range of students being highlighted. Success metrics to measure effectiveness include google analytics for the nomination platform, an increase in student highlights, and social media engagement numbers with campus media platforms.
Future Unsung Heroes success
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