Anna Edwards

Uncovering what is important and at what stage in an experience.

Role: UX Researcher

Employer: Deakin University Library, Australia

The challenge: New students receive information overload. How do we make learning and starting university simple, welcoming, and supportive from day one?

Team size: 11 (Project Lead, Learning Designers, Librarians, Client Experience Staff, Library Student Assistants)

Project Lead time: 12 weeks

Year: 2023

Situation

Insight

Starting university is exciting—but also overwhelming. New students at Deakin faced challenges navigating multiple platforms and information sources. With the rise of AI-generated content and online misinformation, orientation was more important than ever in building confidence, belonging, and trust.

The Library wanted to simplify its orientation and introductory sessions—helping students feel welcome, socially connected, and academically supported.

Methodologies

Mood board data: Interactive activity, post-it-notes on a board, asking commencing students (1. what are you excited about; 2. what are you nervous about)

Empathy mapping: 1 x workshop (10 project team stakeholders)

Text mining: 6 x customer experience librarians drawing insights from live chat data.

Discount usability: Reusing previous journey mapping data

Journey mapping session: 2 x journey mapping workshops with stakeholders and library student advisors.

Guerrilla testing: 1 x session, asking students to define importance of library tasks over a period of time.

Task

My role was to lead the UX research, defining the research scope and methodology, facilitating workshops, and consolidating insights. The goal: uncover the key priorities, pain points, and opportunities that influence students’ first experiences at university, and translate them into a clear, evidence-based student journey.

Action

Research & Discovery

I designed a multi-layered research approach that was cost-effective, inclusive, and collaborative:

Stakeholder alignment: Facilitated a workshop to define project principles and ensure a unified direction.

Mood boards: Interactive post-it activity with new students (“What excites you?” / “What makes you nervous?”).

Empathy mapping: Workshop with 10 stakeholders to identify emotional drivers.

Text mining: Guided 6 customer experience librarians through analysis of live chat data for recurring themes.

Discount usability: Reused previous journey mapping data to save time and budget.

Image of workshop output: defining project principles

Define

Led a cross-team effort to consolidate insights and build stakeholder understanding of HCD principles.

Ran two journey mapping workshops with staff and student advisors, refining “jobs to be done,” pains, and opportunities.Image of text mining analysis

Image of text mining output: defining key questions of enquiry

Build & measure

Asked students to prioritize tasks in order of importance for starting university, ensuring the journey reflected authentic needs.

Extracted key library tasks from the journey map and validated them with students through guerrilla testing at the Experience Lab.

Results

Produced a comprehensive student journey map that:

  • Jobs to be done
  • Context & touchpoints
  • Gains & pains ( system and psychological barriers)
  • Opportunities
  • Emotions
  • The outcome… It became a repository of insights for students to revisit key information, a central resource for program design, guiding the Public Programs team in building events and services, a foundation for digital literacy curriculum, ensuring orientation connects seamlessly with skill-building.