UX Researcher
​Exploratory Research for Bentley Undergraduate Onboarding (2022)
Context: Graduate-level class project
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Role: Research on a team of 4
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Methods: Literature Review, Staff interviews, Cafe Studies, Analysis of IT tickets, & remote in-depth interviews
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Tools: Zoom, Dovetail, Miro, FigJam, & Google Slides
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Timeline: September-December 2022
Executive Summary
Context
Our team was tasked with helping the Bentley administration to understand the experience of incoming undergraduates with the onboarding process.
Prototype about uploading an official business document for verification
Major findings and Recommendations
There is no single place to look for students to track and complete their onboarding process, and the existing checklist items were not as clear as they needed to be. We recommended ensuring the existing checklist in Bentley Connect is complete, understandable, and not repetitive. We also recommended making it clear when a task in the Bentley Connect checklist requires human intervention to be completed and explaining when and why there will be a delay.
Some of the required tasks took a long time, but work on tasks was not saved automatically resulting in some students having to complete tasks multiple times. We recommended automatically saving all in progress tasks.
Background
New Bentley students had onboarding tasks for approximately 3.5 months before beginning their first semester. These tasks involved vital topics such as housing, financial aid, course registration, and vaccinations and health insurance.
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The Bentley administration had previously completed a workshop to understand and explore the onboarding process and discuss pain points and the concept of an ideal process. They realized the process was fragmented and that they needed to hear from students, so my team was tasked with obtaining the student perspective.
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My team wanted to understand the student experience with the main tools they were using - the Bentley Connect checklist and Workday - as well as understand where they were getting help when they needed it.
Limitations
We had some significant limitations in this study, most importantly the fact that we were performing it after students had completed their onboarding experience. Retrospective information is not as useful or accurate as information gathered in the moment, and memories are more unreliable for complex, confusing, multi-month processes.
We were unable to see the checklists students used during onboarding as student access was removed once their tasks were completed. We also did not have access to the undergraduate version of one of the tools and were unable to identify appropriate questions to ask ahead of time.
One of our team members was unable to take part in creating study deliverables for reasons external to the project.
We were unable to replace two of the in-depth interviews due to time limitations, and had 13 rather than 15 participants.
Changes I would make
I would do this study in the summer - from May to August - when incoming students are in the process of becoming onboarded.
To make good use of this time, I would suggest a combination of paid diary studies to collect in situ records of obstacles and one-on-one interviews. These interviews should allow the team to follow up on unexpected obstacles and occurrences to better understand the situations in which they occur. The one-on-one interviews should not happen more often than once a month nor should we interview an individual more than twice. We learned during this study that those students who struggled most with the process are also the ones who have the least free time, so would need to avoid taking too much of their time.
Methodology
Interviews with Bentley Staff
To understand the context and what was already known, we met with a variety of different stakeholders, largely within the IT department. We also met with the person in charge of student onboarding from Student Affairs.​
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I created the following diagram in Miro to more easily understand and follow the onboarding process. Many staff members appreciated the diagram to support their own understanding and requested copies of it.
Onboarding Processing Overview Mapping Exercise
Cafe Studies
Two of our team members spoke with 23 students during 10-15 minute conversations in the student center to better understand their onboarding experience and inform the script for our upcoming long-form interviews.
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In-depth Student Interviews
All four of us met with 13 students during hour long Zoom sessions to understand their experiences. We asked them to talk about anything that stood our to them about their summer onboarding experience and about their current experience with the tools, and asked them to share their screens when relevant. Students were compensated for their time and filled out consent forms before proceeding.
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Tickets from IT
We analyzed 642 IT tickets submitted during the time period of onboarding to better understand where students were struggling in the moment.
Analysis
Cafe Study and In-depth Interviews
The two team members who did the cafe studies transcribed their hand-written notes for greater ease of analysis. We put those notes and our in-depth interview recordings into Dovetail to more easily identify themes. Each team member coded a single interview, then we met using FigJam to come up with a consistent set of 36 codes. We then coded the rest of our interviews. From these results, we used affinity mapping to organize and prioritize our codes into 6 major themes: Digital habits and tools, Devices, Process Fragmentation, Bentley Connect Checklist, Workday, and On campus information resources.
FigJam Affinity Map
Tickets from IT
We reviewed and categorized the tickets into 13 codes according to the aspect of onboarding they related to. Account access and authentication - including lost passwords or inability to access various platforms - were persistent problems across all four months of onboarding and the most common problem reported to IT. Email account setup and computer and hardware setup were also frequently seen in the top five issues and the next two most common reported problems. Finally, Bentley Connect issues were seen frequently until August and was the fourth most frequently reported problem.
Top 5 ticket types by month
Numbers of tickets by category
Findings & Recommendations
Bentley Connect Checklist
Many students felt there was no single source of truth for all onboarding tasks.
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Insufficient information for checklist items created confusion, and latency in checklist item status updates caused anxiety.
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For tasks that require significant time, effort and information input, it caused frustration when progress was not saved.
First Generation Student
“For sports, I needed more medical stuff. [The health center stuff was in Bentley Connect’s checklist, but] for athletics it was just an email and it just told you the things that you needed.”
First Year Student
“Most of my communications were like Hey, I I swear I sent this in and they were like, No, you're good. The system just sucks.”
First Generation Student
“I would try to dedicate a full hour to it, but it would take longer…So sometimes you would come back and then the whole survey would be deleted and then you have to start all over again.”
Our recommendations for Bentley Connect Checklist were:
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ensure it is complete, understandable, and not repetitive
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make clear when a task in the Bentley Connect checklist requires human intervention to be complete and explain when and why there will be a delay
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automatically save in progress tasks
Outcomes
Bentley approved a position to help support student onboarding in early 2023.
Student Affairs was looking at ways to simplify information for new students through an online, interactive resource rather than a static information guide.
Student Affairs was also looking at creating a parent portal for the many onboarding tasks and making more consistent communication with the goal of leveraging family members and other supporters as partners in the experience.
Executive Directory of Onboarding and Student Orientation
"I am really grateful for the insight your work has provided as we move forward."
