NU Q&A - Tough Tour Questions Find a New Home

Client

Northwestern Admissions Office

Team

Sam Schumacher, Jimmy Schuller

Anna Blakley, Liz Gerber (advisor)

My Role

Service Design, UX/UI Design,

Field Research, Interviews, Persona

Duration

3 Months – Coursework 2019

the problem.

Students and parents visiting college campuses are often unable to ask certain questions out of embarrassment or social pressure. This discomfort can negatively impact visitor's impressions of the university or at least lead to an incomplete picture of the school. Design a way for visitors to ask sensitive questions on tours in a way that shields them from embarrassment.

the solution.

A digital service accessible on mobile during campus tours, that allows visitors to anonymously submit questions and have them answered aloud by their tour guide.

design challenge.
(the framing process)

How might we design new services to support a learning/work environment free from sexual harassment & abuse of power where every community member can thrive?

To begin, our team worked to identify our implicit biases, potential stakeholders and pain points by creating a mind-map, which is not shareable, and a stakeholder map, seen below.

Using our learnings from the stakeholder and implicit bias maps, we brainstormed potential specific and actionable "How Might We" questions.

After presenting this list to our class and stakeholders, our team found that we were most interested in questions that allowed us to create early, preventative impact rather than those that effected the post-incident process.

We gravitated specifically to challenges that impacted the communication between University representatives and students/families (questions 5 & 10).

After listing out many points of communication between

University representatives and the student community, we noted that Tour Guides were often the first in-person point of contact for new students and their families.

Framing led us to: How might we remove the stigma associated with sensitive topics, like sexual harassment, on campus tours?

design solution.

NU Q&A – Ask the tough questions completely anonymously

NU Q&A offers Northwestern's visitors an anonymous way to ask any campus question in 2 simple steps:

Scan the QR code, or enter the URL, that appears on the presentation screen or paper flyer
Type your question in the text box on your phone and hit submit!

Northwestern tour guides will answer all submitted questions at designated points throughout the tour.