UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM OPEN DAYS
Moving physcial open days to virtual in light of the COVID pandemic
THE PROBLEM
How do we recruit students for 2021 entry in the face of a global pandemic, to ensure the University remains viable in the short and longer term. Physical open days are a key recruitment opportunity for universities typically attracting over 20,000 visitors. Preparations were already well underway when COVID-19 landed.
The University still had the same business drivers, and we needed to work quickly to find a way to achieve them whilst still keeping students safe under lockdown conditions. Our aims were to:
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Drive Undergraduate recruitment for Sept 2020
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Convert Undergraduate offer holders for Sept 2020
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Support objectives for disadvantaged students (2021)
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Enhance the University’s reputation
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Support Postgraduate recruitment through positioning
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
Three weeks
MAKE OF THE TEAM
Marketing director, product manager, service designer, interaction designers, user researchers
KEY GOAL
Provide an optimal virtual open day experience for potential students and achieving or exceeding business goals
MY ROLE
As lead service designer, I supported the central marketing team to understand the current physical service, and reimagine what a virtual service could look like for open days.
I quickly embedded myself in the cross-functional, multidisciplinary team which had been brought together for the first time. Within the team I managed interaction designers, content designers, user researchers and marketing officers. I aligned with enterprise architects to understand the tech landscape and understand future possibilities.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
Our users told us their priorities were to find out if the University of Nottingham is the right place for them. They also wanted to understand course options, meet academic staff and current students, and get a real taste of campus life.
Additional needs were exposed during research that were specific to COVID. This included heightened anxiety amongst potential students who worried about the COVID safety measures in place at the University. Many also worried whether they would have as good an experience at University during the pandemic due to restrictions in socialising. I worked with the user researchers to create some proto personas to describe the needs and goals of each user type.
Outputs produced during the process
Outputs included a set of user personas for potential students and staff, affinity maps from ideation workshops, high level user journeys, current state service map for open days and future state to-be service map of what it could look like virtually.
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS
I worked with the open day team and University Marketing Directors managers to understand and rapidly map out the current process for open days, before ideating the future state.
We identified where material existed online already and worked with the product manager and content designers to collate material. We identified gaps and teams were tasked with creating new material including videos and social media content such as TikTok and Insta Stories.
I facilitated a series of workshops in parallel, with our creative and web teams and key stakeholders including University professors and other academics to ideate and map the future to-be state for virtual open days. I worked with technical teams to understand and agree the supporting technologies we would use to underpin the service (such as conducting open day talks via Microsoft Teams). I continued to co-ordinate across the team with the product manager, and escalated any concerns early to the Marketing Director.
THESE WERE SOME MAJOR LEARNINGS I WANTED TO HIGHLIGHT
Teams can come together quickly
As long as everyone understands the goal of what we want to achieve, and align behind the vision. Give clarity on the purpose for each individual and how they work together to achieve an outcome.
An accurate and current understanding of users is key
The user research team and marketing department had a wealth of information about key audiences which we were able to quickly tap into. We conducted further research where there were gaps, however the knowledge we had already saved us a lot of time doing extensive research.
