At its essence, Information Science (InfoSci) exists at the convergence of technology, design, and people. Despite being the fourth-largest program at UMD iSchool (College of Information Studies), there exists a lack of awareness among some students about the program. Here's how my team and I partnered up with the InfoSci committee to make the program better and solve important student problems.

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Problem Statement

InfoSci is known as a discovery major, with over 70% of students transferring in after hearing about it from a class or word of mouth. The iSchool wants students to enroll rather than transfer into the program. We tried to understand what motivates students to choose Information Science over other similar undergraduate courses offered by UMD or other universities and discover what problems they are facing.

Role

UX and Visual Designer

• In a team of 5 Designers, I was responsible for the UX research and the visual design.

Project Objectives

• Define the undergrad course Information Science (InfoSci) offered by iSchool
• Discover and resolve issues faced by students of iSchool
• Create conceptual designs for UMD iSchool

Project Challenges

• Talking on unexpected role of visual designer mid-project.
• The timeline given to us for the project, 2 months (Sept 2021 - Nov 2021), was too short to do a deep dive and talk to all students

What do we want to learn?

Under the time constraints, we wrote down few questions to help us understand the problems and circumstances surrounding the students enrolled into the program, transferred into the program or enrolled in similar programs.

• What’s the current identity of InfoSci program?
• What’s do people think of InfoSci within UMD ecosystem?
• What do students’ want out of the program?
• How do we differentiate InfoSci from other similar programs?

Research

Interviews

I, along with my team, conducted six contextual interviews with various stakeholders to understand their needs, motivations, goals, and perspectives. We also interviewed some students from similar courses like Computer Science (CompSci) to understand their views on InfoSci. The interviews consisted of open-ended questions to help us gauge what different user groups expect and stand to achieve from this program.

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Exploring Reddit

UMD subreddit is quite active and many students and even professors use it regularly. Even lots of alumni access the subreddit giving out advise to the students. There are thousands of post asking academic or career advise. The idea behind using reddit was to gain access to unmoderated opinions on the program. This qualitative data would reveal what people truly think of InfoSci and what can be improved.

Insights from reddit

Compsci vs InfoSci

There's a competitive mentality between CompSci and InfoSci. Most students consider CompSci to be better without knowing too much about InfoSci.

"Those who can't make it in CompSci, goes to InfoSci. InfoSci makes you a jack of all trades."

InfoSci Job prospects?

Lot of students don't have any idea about what career would they be able to achieve after bachelors in InfoSci. They don't have knowledge on which industries they could enter and if it's tech industry they feel they would lose out to people who did bachelors in traditional courses like Computer science.

"The diversity of InfoSci major leads to confusion. I don't know where my skillset would be required."

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Creating Affinity Map

After collecting qualitative data from Reddit and interviews, we created an affinity map to understand common themes emerging from our various sources.

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Insights from Affinity Map

1. Social Hierarchy

As InfoSci is less coding oriented than CompSci and is less technical, it's considered as "CompSci-lite" or "CompSci drop out's major." This has lead to a social hierarchy on campus where InfoSci sits at the bottom.

2. InfoSci is a "Discovery Major"

Many students transfer into InfoSci from CompSci or other majors. They discover it through some intro classes or word of mouth. They transfer as they find InfoSci gives them a better work-life balance.

3. Pioneers

The students studying InfoSci are very much open to spreading the word around and helping other students. They want people to know more about InfoSci and how it can help.

4. Career Paths

There's a mix of students who want a set career path, which shows them what electives to take, and some students want to explore and see where it leads to

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Identity Model

To translate our research findings to our clients, we created an identity model to capture what the students like, who they are and what do they want.  

I decided to use identity model rather than personas as it records the self value, their source of pride and what the students are invested in.

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Relationship Model

There are a lot of factors that affect a student's decision on choosing a major or transferring to a different one. This model captures how other people play a part in the student's life and the level of emotional connection they have with the student. Our take on this model is a bit unconventional. We decided to add in abstract concepts like 'Self-esteem' and 'Wellbeing' as they were also deciding factors for students transferring into InfoSci.

Design

After understanding our target audience and synthesizing our research findings, we hopped onto Figma to create conceptual designs to meet everyone's expectations and solve the problems we discovered.

Problems to solve

• A space for students to gather information about the InfoSci program.
• Understanding potential career paths and industries they could enter.
• A platform to display the research and projects undertaken by students and the faculty.

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Information Science Website

Website for the program for students to gather information about the program and learn more about the course. This will make the program more visible in-campus and will also help with marketing the program.

Career Paths

Some students wanted a well defined career paths as they felt lost without any reference point. We curated some career paths and a set of elective courses that they can choose or edit based on their goals.

Easy access to Advisors and Student Ambassadors

Prospective students can email any appointed student ambassadors and iSchool advising committee members to gather more information about the program and resolve any queries they may have, additionally, this can also help ease the transition process for the students who are transferring into the program.

Project Showcase

Webpage dedicated to showcasing the work conducted by the students and the faculty of the InfoSci program.