Improving the freshman experience

Understanding student, parent, and staff needs (during a pandemic)

Content analysis / User interviews / User Research
Lynbrook High School students posing at school sign

The Need

The 2020 school year was like no other due to the Covid-19 virus pandemic and the requirement to conduct school remotely. Even with plans in place, the first few weeks were rough at Lynbrook High School especially for freshmen and the administration wanted to understand why. And I wanted to improve my user research and interview skills.

The Goal

Onboarding freshmen (email communications, creating accounts, setting passwords, and getting familiar with the learning management system during the first few weeks) was especially challenging in 2020. By interviewing students/parents to learn what worked and what didn’t, I would provide the feedback and findings in a report with actionable key insights that the administration could use to improve the freshman experience.

The Plan

Time period: 10 weeks (see Scope image for details)

Stakeholders:

  1. Maria – Lynbrook High School Principal
  2. Amy – Lynbrook High School Library Media Teacher

The stakeholders and I agreed that the primary research activity should be interviews with the following criteria:

  • Interview sessions with 9th grade students and their parent(s).
  • Each interview would last between 30-45 minutes consisting of a variety of questions and a few tasks.
  • The interview would focus on what went well, what didn’t work, and suggestions to make it better in the future.

Project task schedule:

  1. Preliminary research
  2. Create (and approve) project brief
  3. Stakeholder interviews
  4. Create student/parent interview questions and tasks
  5. Draft the email to 9th grade parents asking for participation
  6. Coordinate scheduling of remote user interviews
  7. Conduct remote user interviews
  8. Gather data and insights from notes and video recorded sessions
  9. Create final report
  10. Present final report to school administrationx

Regarding the interview questions and tasks, I met with the Library Media Teacher and we came up with 25 questions that I added to a Google Sheet and would refer to during each interview session. We also agreed that all feedback gathered in each session would be anonymous (only seen by me).

Image describing the participants of the project
Participant details from the final report
Image describing the scope of the project
Final report scope definition
Interview data from final report
Interview details from final report

Constraints

  • No in-person interviews – Due to the “reside-in-place” mandate, the interviews had to be remote so I used Zoom which is the primary conferencing application all Lynbrook students use.
  • Some students not able to attend – Some interviews were on the weekend but most were during the week in the morning (class time) or evening (homework time).

My role

As the sole UX practitioner, this project provided opportunities to expand my skills in research, stakeholder and “user” interviews, content analysis, and synthesizing all of the data into actionable key insights.

Dean sitting at a table with laptop prepping for a user interview.
Photo of me preparing for an interview

Results

8 user interviews. The goal was to get more than 5 and stop at 12.

The Final Report included the following:

  • 6 Key Insights
  • 2 Key Findings
  • 3 Direct user quotes
  • 6 Suggestions (observations made by Dean)
  • Strong recommendation to read the detailed feedback in the spreadsheet

Lessons learned

  1. Plan in a buffer
    I originally planned for the project to be completed in 6 weeks but needed more time for data synthesis and writing the Final Report so eventually extended it to 10 weeks. This required updating the Project Brief.
  2. Avoid class time
    Some of my interview appointment time slots were during weekday mornings which made it impossible for students to attend since they were in class.
  3. Don’t shy away from tasks
    I had plans to have participants perform 3 tasks but I didn’t form a solid plan by the first interview and finally established one by the 7th and 8th session.
  4. Avoid leading questions
    It’s really easy to ask leading questions. Ask open-ended questions, be patient, listen, and take good notes.
  5. Recordings are very helpful
    I asked for consent from every participant to have permission to record their Zoom session for my own notes (assuring them that their feedback would be anonymous) and thankfully, they gave it. The recording proved invaluable when I gathered all the results and when writing the Final Report.
  6. Calendly is a great calendar/scheduling tool
    I used Calendly to handle interview scheduling coordination. It syncs with Google Calendar and Zoom so parents were able to view available interview time slots and choose the times that fit best with their schedule. It also sent out confirmation emails that included the meeting details and Zoom instructions. It even gracefully coordinated rescheduling when necessary.
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