Final Designs
Overview
Opportunity
The New York City Department of Education is the largest school district in the US, serving over 1.1 million students across nearly 2,000 schools. School Finder is a website that allows users to search, explore, and favorite high schools, and functions as the digital version of the NYC high school print directory. Its rollout supported guidance counselors first, the roughly 500 staff who walk eighth graders through admissions, before scaling to students and families directly.
How might we help students and family members understand and navigate their way through the high school admissions process?
Outcome
Research
Methods
- Synthesis and analysis: We synthesized 16 past interviews and 8 usability tests provided by the Department of Education.
- Interviews: We interviewed 4 Guidance Counselors across different boroughs and 3 Department of Education staff members.
- Contextual inquiry: We visited a Round 2 fair.
Research Findings
- Families rely heavily on word-of-mouth about how to get into schools, and inaccurate information is frequently passed around.
- Many families lack the time, resources and tech literacy to research the 700 programs offered.
- Tracking important dates and deadlines is a difficult task.
- Students, families and counselors have a hard time creating, saving and sharing lists of schools they’re interested in.
User Needs
- As a Guidance Counselor or Department of Education staff member, I need an easier way to: educate each student and family about the overall admissions process and the different admissions methods, and communicate key dates and deadlines.
- As a student or family member, I need to: understand the overall admissions process and the different admissions methods, and be aware of key dates and deadlines.
Use Case
How students, family members, Guidance Counselors and Family Welcome Centers fit into the path from wanting to apply to submitting an application: understand, organize, execute.
Feature Prioritization
Priorities
- The most important feature was integrating the front portion of the print directory that held explanations of the admissions process.
- Based on our research findings, we also added new features and made a few modifications to increase clarity and usability. This includes creating a global navigation and making changes to the homepage, favorites page and individual school pages.
Usability Testing
Highlights
Hamburgers Are Food, Not Fun
Our first iteration for navigation incorporated a hamburger icon. We assumed that everyone would either know what was behind it or have the bandwidth to learn. We were wrong, and learned that hidden content ultimately means less discoverability.
What’s in a Name?
The Admissions Guide used to have a different name. In our earliest iterations, it went by “The Knowledge Center,” but to be sure, I A/B tested 12 different variations. “Admissions Guide” and “Admissions Information” tied for first place. One tester said: “Admissions Guide is like good, someone has thought about what I need to do, and Admissions Information is like someone is going to give me a ton of information.”
Equity, Not Equality
Designing for equity is designing with empathy. We kept in mind that the users who would most benefit from the website are low-income families that don’t have access to outside resources and assistance. So when we tested the name for the Admissions Guide, we included users from various language backgrounds. And when we designed the Favorites Page, we made sure to add more sharing functionality so students can send their choices to Guidance Counselors before they meet with them.
Testing Script
Opening Questions
- Before we start, can you tell us a little about your current role in the admissions process?
- Can you tell us a little about your current use of School Finder?
- How do you currently motivate students and families to get involved and proactive about the high school admissions process?
- How do you suggest a student apply to a variety of schools?
- What vocabulary do you use?
- Please spend five minutes exploring the app like you normally would.
- What would you expect to be able to do with a school search engine?
Prompts and Tasks
- So why don’t we take a look at this? We’re going to hand the phone over to you.
- Feel free to click around. Not everything is necessarily going to work, and if something doesn’t, I might ask you what you expected to happen when you clicked it.
- If you could speak out loud and walk us through your thoughts about what you’re seeing, that would be great. But before we go anywhere, can you tell me what you’re looking at?
- What do you see on the screen? What else do you think you can do on this page?
- What else do you see here? (Main page, Key Dates, Calendar button, navigation menu)
- You want to search for a school, save it and send your saved list to a parent.
- What does the heart mean to you?
- You are walking a parent through School Finder for the first time and would like to sign them up for email updates from the DOE about the admissions process. How might you do that?
- Find the open house for a specific high school.
- Suspend reality for a moment and pretend this is your first time on School Finder and you’re not sure how to use it. How would you figure out how to use the site?
- You want to view your saved schools. How would you do that?
- Let’s do a scenario. Pretend you are suggesting School Finder to a family who is new to the admissions process. They’re taking in a lot of new information, and you’d like to point them toward ways to learn more.
Design Decisions
Site Map
The Knowledge Center, later renamed the Admissions Guide after testing, branches off the homepage alongside Favorites, Search, Round 2 Options and Calendar, and splits into Getting Started topics and a full High School Admissions Guide.
Admissions Guide
From research: Families rely on word-of-mouth, and inaccurate information is frequently passed around. Integrating the print directory’s explanations of the admissions process was the most important feature.
Solution: The Admissions Guide is a space within School Finder and is accessible through the global navigation. It integrates the admissions process from the current print directory so users can access key information and questions.
Global Navigation
From research: In usability testing, the hamburger menu hid content and made it less discoverable.
Solution: A global navigation that makes the Homepage, Favorites Page and Admissions Guide easy to find.
Homepage
From research: Tracking important dates and deadlines is a difficult task.
Solution: Added dates from the directory and application as well as a link to the citywide Admissions Calendar. This serves as a visible reminder for key dates and deadlines.
School Page
From research: Students, families and counselors have a hard time saving lists of schools they’re interested in.
Solution: Moved the Favorites heart icon toward the middle of the page for more visibility and highlighted the Program Code to increase findability.
Favorites Page
From research: Students, families and counselors have a hard time creating, saving and sharing lists of schools they’re interested in.
Solution: Added Reach, Target and Likely sections and the ability to reorder favorite schools. We also added print, copy link and share buttons. The new functionality will improve the diversity of programs students list on their applications and remind them that they should apply to a range of programs.