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Educause

Product Design, User Research, Visual Design & Prototypes

Services Provided

Educause is a non profit association in the United States whose mission is “to advance higher education through the use of information technology”. Membership is open to institutions of higher education, corporations serving the higher education information technology market, and other related associations and organizations.

Product Management

Throughout my three year engagement with Educause I was in charge of product management, research, visual design and building interactive prototypes for user testing.

User Research

Over the past three years I’ve have met with over 50 higher education CIO’s from institutions all over the globe. I worked closely with these users to help improve their overall experience within EDUCAUSE’s online digital systems.

Product Design

As lead product designer, I was in charge of coming up with innovative ways for users to interact with Educause’s valuable information.

Visual Design

I built a modular design system that allowed users to save existing reports which allowed them to compare against other educational institutions quickly and easily.

Project Highlights

When it comes to advancing higher education through the use of information technology, EDUCAUSE is the organization at the forefront of the movement — so much so that they’re chartered by the Federal Government to exclusively manage the .EDU domain. Adding to that, EDUCAUSE hosts the top annual conference for college and university Chief Information Officers and also administers. The Core Data Service (CDS) annual survey, is an indispensable resource for helping schools make the right investments in information technology and their digital ecosystem.

CDS Portal Redesign

By participating in the CDS survey, institutions submit data about their IT staffing, financials, and services. The data is fed into a reporting tool that participating institutions can use to benchmark their IT organization and compare it against other institutions.

The tool is vital in helping schools make the business case for new technology. In order to improve the CDS survey and portal, EDUCAUSE conducted a search for a UX and digital product development firm and selected me for the role.

Key IT Metrics

I kicked off the research efforts by attending the national EDUCAUSE conference where I conducted nearly 20 user interviews. Our goal was to understand how CDS users navigate the portal, pull reports, and ultimately what they’re trying to achieve with the data and downloadable reports. 

Through our research, we uncovered a significant gap between the way an average CDS user conceptualizes data and the data science-esque way it’s displayed in the CDS portal. Drawing on my research and the results from several rounds of prototype testing, I created a modular design that’s easy to navigate and significantly reduces the amount of time it takes a user to find meaningful insights.

Building a Partnership

The experience of working together led to me becoming EDUCAUSE’s go-to UX and digital product development partner. I’ve engaged on a number of additional projects.

I’m honored to be working with an organization dedicated to advancing higher ed through modern user-centered technology.

Say Hello!

Please feel free to reach out. I’m always willing to help bring clarity to what I do.

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