Pathways
Helping college students feel more confident and happy in making decisions for their college experience.
Research
UI/UX Design
Branding
Pathways serves as my Master's thesis and is the culmination of a year of studying interaction and user-experience design at the School of Visual Arts New York.
Awards
Recipient of the SVA Paula Rhodes Award for excellence in thesis completion
Special thanks to
Takahiro Kawaguchi
Thesis Advisor
Eric Forman
Thesis Faculty Advisor
Context
College is a thrilling yet nerve-wracking phase in a student’s life. With endless possibilities at their fingertips, they are at the same time confronted with the daunting task of discovering what they want to do with their future.
After hearing countless stories from individuals who feel that they were not given the chance to explore their interests to the fullest, or did but struggled to find their way, I was inspired to develop Pathways.

My goal is to equip college students with the necessary tools and confidence to make informed decisions that aid in their personal development. Ultimately, even if it does not turn out to be the best four years of their life, I aspire to help make college a fulfilling experience for students and at the very least, a great four years of their life.
Problem
Students don't know what to expect when going to college and don't receive adequate guidance and support, causing them to be more stressed or unhappy than they need to be to achieve their goals.
People generally also tend to want to base their choices off of the experiences of others and students are no different. But information on forums isn’t super comprehensive, and a lot of students only know a few people at the school they’re going to.

So lot of their major decisions end up being based on either limited information or limited points of view and students often eventually realize that what they had picked…wasn’t actually right for them.


Opportunity areas



My primary hypothesis

Research
I first talked to college graduates to see what they enjoyed about their college experiences and what they wished had gone differently. I then turned to current college students to better understand present-day experiences
Below is a compilation of questions I asked during these interviews.
Before College

What did you think college in general was going to be like when you were in high school?

How did you come to these conclusions?

‍What did you think your college specifically was going to be like, were there any things you assumed?

Did you do anything to prepare for college life before you went?

Did you know anyone at your school before you went or did you have any college students that you talked to when you were a high schooler?
At College

Can you tell me a bit about what you planned to study, what you actually studied, and other things you did while at college?

What was your social life like at college?

Where did you make friends, did you feel like there were any groups where you were able to find a sense of community?

What did you find, if anything, to be difficult about your college experience?

What did you love about your college experiences?

What did you want to get out of college by going?
Reflection

Is there anything you wish you had known before going to college?

Is there anything you wish you had done differently in college?

Was there anything else you would have wanted from your college environment that you feel like you weren’t able to get?

What did you do when you were struggling? What resources were available to you?
I learned that students are academically prepared to be accepted to a school but often have an inaccurate idea of what their actual experience at the school will be like. Moreover, many students don’t feel emotionally and socially prepared to navigate their college experience, especially without the support system they left behind at home.
“Freshman year I did apply for a couple of clubs. Realized it was very competitive to even get into certain clubs. I think after getting rejected from a couple, it was a bit demoralizing."
“I thought I’d have the chance to take a bunch of different classes and explore my interests but all the intro level classes are weed-out classes for things like pre-med.”
“My school didn’t really offer that much creative stuff. There’s no digital or design or UX in my school. I should have thought about what kind of school I’m going to before going to it and actually think about potential stuff I’d want to explore.”
Students often feel obligated to have it all figured out when they have no idea what to do. This often causes them to go along with what others are doing or have done, instead of taking the time to explore their interests.
“The first quarter you learn about all the degree requirements all the majorrequirements, how to graduate on time, etc. It can be quite stressful. I didn’tfeel like I was given the opportunity to just not worry about anything and pickwhatever classes I’m interested in for the next year or two.”
“I came to Northwestern for material science, not knowing what it is. I think that’s one of the biggest things about selecting a major before you even came to the school, I had no idea what material science is, what the classes are like. I just read like two pages of the brochure from NU engineering, applied for the program, and got in.”
“I think, part of it was probably that I was just influenced by other people because everyone at my school they go in and were just like ‘oh, let me doe economics, let me do this certificate’ and I was like oh I’ll just do that too.”
It is extremely common for students to use the experiences of their peers and alumni as a reference point when deciding what to study in college. Various factors, such as personal interests and career opportunities, can influence these decisions.
“There was actually one other girl who went from my high school was at Northwestern for that major.

She was doing really cool things that were of my interest... so I figured, oh, it makes sense for me to at least try to do the same major so that I can maybe have an opening for those similar opportunities.”
“For the first quarter of school, at least, we had like weekly catch ups with our PA group. So we learned about each other’s experiences.”
“Throughout the years in college...you can accidentally get peer pressured and just follow what other people do.”
A large part of the process involved continuing to better understand both user behavior and needs. The following assumptions were explored through both user-interviews and secondary research in an effort to learn more about how students feel when they encounter certain kinds of information.
Ideate
I also begun brainstorming initial ideas that could be used to help test my hypothesis.
A platform where students can anonymously share their thoughts and feelings about their college experiences

Current avenues for students to put out their experiences include various social media platforms but mainly focus around humor and entertainment.

Platforms like Reddit allow for a wider variety of topics to be discussed but the platform isn’t geared towards college topics particularly and the information on there can be scattered and hard to sift through.

There are also highly-successful platforms like Glassdoor and Blind that allow people to anonymous discuss and share information of their own while gaining access to others’ information.

This solution might not be the most creative as it has been done for other areas/ industries but there currently does not exist such a platform for college students so I think it’s still worth exploring. I wanted, however, to focus more on the emotional aspect than turning it into another career growth and development platform.
An easy way for incoming or younger students to reach out to older students to ask them questions, or search through commonly asked questios

In my research I found that while maybe not all upperclassmen at a college would be willing to help guide new students, a significant number of them are. Every year at colleges across the US, students sign up to be orientation leaders, peer advisors, teaching assistants, student-tutors, and mentors.

The issue at many schools, however, is that often students either have limited access to these mentors, don’t know how to reach out for help (or feel hesitant to do so for various reasons), or only have access to them through joining a specific club. Moreover, the people they get connected with might not necessarily be of help with them or they might not feel comfortable talking to them

Some kind of platform allowing students to have a structured way to seek mentorship with older students could be highly beneficial to helping newer students who are lost and struggling.There, however, would need to be some kind of incentive for older students to actively participate beyond pure altruism
My initial concept exploration consisted of a platform where students can anonymously:
1. Take polls to see how the student body is feeling as a whole and get resources based on poll insights
2. Share their thoughts and feelings about school and connect with others over shared experiences
3. View the paths that other students took through college. This includes clubs joined, classes taken, majors switched to and dropped.

Home/Feed
Shows a brief overview of your profile information and the popular posts of the day


Roadmap overview
View different roadmaps of students and filter for the major/year/job you’re looking for

College journeys
An overview of an individual roadmap including basic details about the student

Roadmap timeline
A detailed view of all the classes taken broken down by time period. Annotations can be added onto different classes and clubs to share further thoughts



Out of the whole concept, users showed the most interest towards the roadmaps feature
Users liked being able to see a timeline overview of a student's schedule
Users felt the roadmaps feature was something they hadn't seen before.
Users had some privacy concerns around the anonymity of the platform
Diving deeper into building out this individual feature, I prototyped and tested 'Roadmaps' with users
What I learned:
Before College

What did you think college in general was going to be like when you were in high school?

How did you come to these conclusions?

‍What did you think your college specifically was going to be like, were there any things you assumed?

Did you do anything to prepare for college life before you went?

Did you know anyone at your school before you went or did you have any college students that you talked to when you were a high schooler?
At College

Can you tell me a bit about what you planned to study, what you actually studied, and other things you did while at college?

What was your social life like at college?

Where did you make friends, did you feel like there were any groups where you were able to find a sense of community?

What did you find, if anything, to be difficult about your college experience?

What did you love about your college experiences?

What did you want to get out of college by going?
Reflection

Is there anything you wish you had known before going to college?

Is there anything you wish you had done differently in college?

Was there anything else you would have wanted from your college environment that you feel like you weren’t able to get?

What did you do when you were struggling? What resources were available to you?
Final design
Pathways is a crowd-sourced platform that allows students to view previous data accumulated from other students and alumni in exchange for sharing their own experiences, and weigh pros and cons to make decisions about their college experience.

College Roadmaps
Students can view other students’ and alumni’s class schedules and extracurriculars to help learn about the options available to them

Student Mentorship
Connecting upperclassmen and alumni who are open to sharing advice with younger students that have questions about their college journey

Decision maker
A system that provides information and helps students make different choices about their college experience and gives them different options.

Students sign up using their school email, giving them access to their university's page on Pathways.

In onboarding, the app collects details about the student's priorities and interests that it uses to shape their experience on the platform.


In Roadmaps, users are able to see a timeline overview of a student's schedule, including areas of study, classes, and extracurriculars.

Users can zoom in to see additional details, and click into any card to learn more.

The app will periodically surface short surveys to allow returning students to easily and quickly update their schedules and provide feedback on classes, seamlessly extending their access to the platform.

In the about section of the app, users are able to see an overview of what the student studied, where they worked, and a section called "big moves" that shows major decisions a student made during college, like changing their major. They can also reply to any part of a student's profile to ask additional questions.


The decision maker helps students weight different options in making major college decisions such as changing their major or deciding what club to join, and draws from both university records as well as student data on the app to provide personalized recommendations for students.

In the decision maker, students answer questions about their interests, preferences, and priorities, and receive recommendations on what might be the best choice for them.