Radical PhD: New Feature Design

The Client

Doctoral students, especially those from marginalized communities, experience isolation and high levels of stress because of academic stigma against seeking aid. RadicalPhD connects doctoral students to additional support and resources such as dissertation coaching, planning tools, and online community. They aim to provide support without resistance, and give student feelings of empowerment and control, from a place of healing and genuine care.

RadicalPhD currently has a website in beta, and is interested in exploring new features to further assist PhD candidates in their journey.

The Goals

• Learn what new features users would most value

• Recommend new feature set in line with client’s development budget

The Solution

Through initial research and Kano analysis, our team discovered that RadicalPhD users value features that promote brand authenticity and transparency, provide further free or low-cost resources, and aid in self care and self control. I compiled a new set of features such as redesigned informational pages, pay what you can access to expert faculty, and automated personal reminders. While staying within RadicalPhD’s development scope, the comprehensive feature set creates healing space for authenticity, guidance, and care.

Client and User Research

Our client had a wealth of experience within the doctoral space, and conducted extensive research into the needs of the users (doctoral students). During our initial meeting, our team learned that some of the greatest barriers to success for doctoral students are a lack of information and support from their institution, stigma around seeking help that leads to isolation, and difficulty in managing their personal life. Students are also usually on a shoestring budget.

On a short term basis, the client expressed a desire to “meet students where they’re at,” bringing resources to them. In the long term, they envision RadicalPhD as a supportive hub, providing space for levity, easy access to local assistance, and more opportunities to leverage the expertise of adjunct faculty.

After hearing from the client, as well as consulting with team members who had been doctoral students themselves, I created a user journey map to help identify current pain points and opportunity areas within the site experience. Walking through the site, I noted several key potential pain points for the user: a lack of transparency about pricing and how to use the tools, few low-cost/free resources and none specifically for marginalized groups, and minimal social activity.

With these pain-points/opportunity areas in mind, it was time to ideate. Starting with brainstorm sketching, I created multiple lo-fi prototypes and quick ideas. I then chose five which ranged from quick aesthetic changes to entirely new features, and moved those into digital wireframes. For each prototype, I wrote a succinct and evocative description to clearly convey the function and intent.

In order to determine which features users would value most, the team converged to select a set of 11 features that covered a broad range of functions. We then sent a Kano survey with these features to target users whom our client had identified.

When we received the results, several insights stood out. First, especially to students who felt disenfranchised, features with transparency about the site’s mission and cost were key. It was important to know ‘where you’re at.’ They also valued features that would help with self-care and self-management. They also found free resources to be a priority.

While one of RadicalPhD’s goals, I was still surprised at the extent to which users valued levity on a dissertation-focused site. They appreciated features which gamified the dissertation process.

With RadicalPhD’s mission and the user insights as a guiding light, I created high-fidelity prototypes for a feature set centered around authenticity, guidance, and care:

• Currently, the user sees an informational page about paid coaching upon login. This contrasts RadicalPhD’s mission of empowering and centering students, and the users’ interest in self management. I created a new landing page that centers the user’s experience, with features that empower and uplift their personal lives.

• I redesigned the individual coaching page to be more transparent and authentic, while also condensing the current text-heavy layout to reduce information fatigue for the users.

• I also added two new features to provide low-cost/free learning resources, so that help would always be available regardless of need. These included free video resource, and a virtual, pay what you can “Office Hour,” where students can engage in low-pressure, helpful conversation with faculty.

I selected this set of features to fit within RadicalPhD’s development scope, and packaged them into a set of annotated wireframes with development estimates to provide a clear and comprehensive vision for the future of RadicalPhD.