Academic
Coaching

Complete Story
& Design Proces

Problem and Needs

While Academic Coaching provided an excellent experience once a student discovered them, their messaging to students was very unclear and failed to close the loop with students who had visited them before. The problem was a lack of clear communication guidelines, confusing handouts, and semi-optimal handling of students. Any solution would need to be complex enough to solve for these and simple enough for the coaches to use and understand it.

 The Process

We began by sourcing through multiple spreadsheets of qualitative data from students who had gone through Academic Coaching. To accompany this hard data, we carried out qualitative interviews with students who had not used the resource. The combination of these two data sets gave us a good idea of some of the student’s major pain points. Combining these interviews with documents from the coaches, we created a user journey map and persona of the two largest student groups.

From analyzing data and producing artifacts, we established three significant areas along the customer journey, where we could have the most effect:

1. New branding

   • The experience was lacking a connection to CMU, new branding would help

2. Show results

   • We need to directly show how coaching had helped people

3. Design offboarding

   1. Students need a way to offboard and recall the help they received
      

Brand and Logo

To begin the rebranding, we looked for a font and color scheme that would lend Academic Coaching trust and credibility. We also needed both font and colors to translate to print and web to ensure using it was effortless. The solution to all these problems came from CMU, the parent body of Academic Coaching, and their recent rebrand. From this, we chose a color scheme around Highlands Sky Blue and Carnegie Red, with Open Sans as a font. The resulting style guide gave a modern feel while also being recognizably associated with the larger college campus.

The Logo went through several rounds of iteration, but eventually, we developed a design that reflected Academic Coaching's goals of giving solid foundations and developing building blocks. In these first iterations, we were still far off, but the theme of stackable shapes was beginning to take shape. After trial and error, we came to a final iteration, relying on the metaphor of a “solid base.”

Language and Example Cases

Previously the language of Academic Coaching was based on not failing and improving from already dire situations. Rather than making the motivation avoiding failure, we created guidelines for language that projected motivation and success. Phases like, “surviving finals,” were replaced with more positive words like, “engaging with the success.” Our focus on success allowed the organization to stand out and appeal to both students in need and those looking to be proactive. We also introduced them to student profiles for print and web, allowing them to build credibility with real-life examples of success.

Establishing an Off-boarding Step

While Academic Develop had given a great deal of thought to how students might best achieve success, there had not been the same amount of thought given to what happens after. To address this, we created a small wooden cube that offered a way for coaches and students to develop better ways to remember the lessons.

This physical object not only served to remind students of success methods but also positively represented Academic Coaching and enabled students to advocate the services effectively.

The most important outcome was to ensure that Academic Coaching had all the tools needed to continue applying the changes and improvement without our help. Key Results:

1. New brand guideline

   • Guidelines for all digital and print mediums

2. Cohesive brand

   • Effective language and uniform language of support and instructions

3. A feedback loop of successful students referring future students.