2019: Starfish Student List Redesign

Background

In 2019—2021, I was the Senior UX Designer at Hobsons (acquired by EAB), for the Starfish product. Starfish strives to bridge students, instructors, and advisors in their shared goal of student retention by providing tools and resources that are strategic and proven to help students finish their academic journey. 

Two of the Starfish user personas—Instructor/Faculty and Advisor/Counselor—spend the majority of their time on the ‘Students’ tab and the ‘Tracking Items’ tab of Starfish. This research project was to gather feedback from these two specific user groups about the possibility of combining the Students and Tracking tabs into one. 

Research

I interviewed nine users in remote 1-hour sessions on Zoom. During the sessions, I interviewed users about their processes and tools, and also shared wireframes to get general feedback about the concept of combining My Students and Tracking. Outreach for volunteers was done using Compass—an online community platform and learning tool for Starfish users.

Design

Several desktop mock ups were created using Sketch and shared with users in a prototype built in Invision.

Results

The idea to combine these two tabs was well received by users and the product development team. Unfortunately, such a robust change to navigation and site architecture deemed this product update as “out of scope,” and the work was deprioritized to the quiet corners of the Product Backlog.