Overview

We are a team of 6 international students from the University of Washington CIRCLE office aim to improve international students' information access to school resources and critical immigration deadlines.

After user research, we started with designing a mobile application with events, calendar, and upcoming deadline notices feature.

Later, because of potential complications working with the school IT department and an organizational shift prioritizing incoming student welcome season, we had to pivot the focus to the onboarding experience and make a web app instead of a mobile app.

Background

Our experience offering advising services and sending announcements at the UW CIRCLE office inspired me to do this project.

Problem context: International Students' Challenges

In a decentralized university like the UW, each department operates independently with its own set of functions and access to information.

Due to regulations such as FERPA, student information is not universally shared across the institution. This often leads to confusion as students navigate administrative tasks across various departments, especially during onboarding.

The struggles with receiving scattered information from multiple offices extends beyond the onboarding process. For instance:
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1. Lack of knowledge about the options to drop a course or opt for a Pass/Fail grade when struggling academically, which impacts their performance.
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2. The struggle navigating the US banking system when paying tuition from foreign bank accounts, resulting in late fees.

What have we tried to address the problems?

01 Email

Edu email is the primary communication method across the university.
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Limitations:
1. Email is not popular in every culture. If an international student neglected the edu email setup process to begin with, then emails become ineffective.
2. The volume of emails can lead to information overload, causing user fatigue.

02 Social Media (The RCG Program under UW CIRCLE)

We connected newly admitted international students across 5 social media platforms, tailored to regional cultures (e.g., Line for Japan, WhatsApp for Latin America...) to send informative announcements and encourage peer-to-peer networking.
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Limitations:
1. Despite support from other on-campus offices in promoting the RCG Program, some students remain unaware of it or choose not to participate, believing social media lacks seriousness.
2. When multiple topics are discussed simultaneously in a social media chat thread, important announcements can be ignored.

So, what can we do to further improve international students' information access during onboarding and beyond?

Research

Surveys & Interviews

We sent out surveys and conducted interviews to learn about current ways and challenges for international students to stay informed, and whether a mobile app can help.

To give participants an idea of what kind of information the app would convey, I made the following prototype:

User Persona

With the insights from surveys and interviews, we came up with the following user persona.

Ideation & Solution

How might we...

• Facilitate Miwako's connection with international students through knowledge of virtual events while she's still in Japan?
• Provide Miwako with additional resources to stay informed about her immigration-related steps?
• Allow Zhiqin to be informed about events organized by various Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) to help him find opportunities for networking?
• Enable Zhiqin to access information from workshops and information session events, especially when he cannot attend due to his busy schedule?
• Inform Amina about her options in the face of visa-related challenges due to extenuating circumstances?

Here are some possible solutions:

1. A dashboard page: Important deadlines, upcoming relevant events, and event recaps. It would serve as a central hub for international students to stay informed and engaged.
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2. A visual calendar: Helps visualize the timing of various events, making it easier for students like Miwako and Zhiqin to plan their participation.
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3. A event recording repository: A space to access past events' recordings, accommodating students who cannot attend live sessions due to scheduling conflicts or time zone differences.
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4. Centralized office contact information directory: A page with contact details for multiple university offices. To provide Amina with a clear and accessible resource for seeking assistance.

Prototyping & Testing

Here are the prototypes with features stem from possible solutions and the user testing along the way.

Homepage:

We built on the homepage prototype made earlier in the user research process.