The Challenge
Creating course graphics is common place when developing online courses. Great graphics can elevate a course's quality by cleanly articulating concepts and providing aesthetic appeal. At many institutions, instructional designers and faculty members develop courses without graphic design support. As a leader of a team of graphic designers within the online education unit at Sam Houston State University, I saw an opportunity to streamline and elevate the quality of graphic design services that we provide to instructional designers and faculty.
Research
My team and I interviewed members of our instructional design team, and discovered several pain points in our graphic design service. The process for requesting course graphics from our team was a source of frustration for those requesting our help.
We set our sights on answering the question... How might we improve our course graphic service, so that the instructional designer and faculty experience is better?
"Our key insight about the frustration is that it points to a workflow that's loosely strung together with a google form, spreadsheet, and cluttered local network storage drive."
Ideation & Design
We mapped out the journey through our course graphics service, and brainstormed existing resources and infrastructure that could help us find a solution.
Office 365 and SharePoint were already licensed and utilized by our institution, and offered great integration tools to streamline our service operations.
We prototyped a subsite within our exisiting SharePoint to create a one-stop location for instructional designers and faculty to request and archive course graphics. We streamlined several service touchpoints by leveraging automation and integration tools within Microsoft Power Automate. Additionally, a companion mobile PowerApp was prototyped to help my team improve their workflow, and ease of access to information.
Feedback & Implementation
The initial response from users was overwhelmingly positive. The centralized digital experience was a delight and relief to instructional designers that we surveyed for feedback. Our research expanded our empathy for the instructional design team and helped focus and prioritize features on our backlog before designing and developing.
After the positive feedback we recieved from their team, we implemented this system into our operational practice. Since doing so, we've recieved additional feedback and annually review the system for additional painpoints. In later iterations a self-service tool was developed and implemented to create an additional avenue for access to creating quality graphics quickly.
The results of this service design were instrumental in meeting the demand of an onslaught of course development during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We experienced an 84% increase in total service demand while decreasing our time to completion by 48%. We used this system to create 44% more course graphics in 2020 than in 2019.
About Me
I’ve always been driven by curiosity. It’s wrapped into my creative self and helps define the tenacity and passion that I bring to working with others.
From taking things apart as a kid to rethinking process and designing for the human experience now, my journey has been filled with adventure, curiosity, and a drive to create. There’s always an interesting adventure waiting around the corner, so reach out and get in touch.
