Contacting Professor in SCAD

Background/ Problems Assumption

Since SCAD has many departments and majors, most students only know professors in their own departments. However, sometimes students need help from professors in other majors (e.g., project advice, academic questions, or advice on professional design tools), and it can be difficult to contact professors who have never taken a class before. Even if they do get contact information, meeting times are another issue, as most professors are very busy and the process of setting up meetings often takes a lot of time.

To solve this problem, we designed a sub-function of the SCAD software to help SCAD students better find the right professors and contact them.

UX/UI design

Design Process

Desk Research

We did desk research from students' perspective and professors' perspective and then get information:

We discussed and collected information from each other, then made a very brief user journey map to help us to organize our thoughts.

From this map, we learned that there are main several problems from choosing a professor to getting professor's information to making an appointment.

1. It's hard to find professors' detailed information if you haven't met this professor before.

2. Even though you get professors' email, the process of waiting for reply is torturing.

3. It's hard to choose an appropriate time for meeting.

4. Students may forget some details that professor said after consulting

Final Delivery

Research Process

Survey Results

Students：

“40% are undergraduate students, 58% are graduate students, 2% are others"

(Part of the data: )

12.5% of participants have no idea how many professors are in their major, and only 15% of participants know all of the professors in their major.
Most participants have close interaction with 2-5 professors in their major.
50% of participants have good overall experience with appointment making with professor while another half have neutral feeling.
17.5% of participants say it’s hard to schedule meeting with professor while 35% did not agree.
41% of participants think email is the most effective way to schedule meeting with professor while the other 30% disagree.
64% of participants think it's important to seek advice from professor outside of their major for project or academic propose while 5% did not agree and the other 30% have no opinion.
40% of participants agree that it is hard to know what professor they should go to when needed help while another 30% disagree.
77.5% of participants say it’s hard to know professor if they’re not having class with them.

Survey Key Insight

We used Affinity Map to help us organized information and get some key insights.

For students:

It is hard to schedule meeting with professor especially department chair because of the lack of slots to choose and it usually fill up very fast. It would be better if professor provide more slot and time especially online meeting such as Zoom.
There are almost 10 different ways to find professor’s contact information and not include their office hour.
There should be more convenient way to reach out to professor whether to chat or schedule meeting. It should be easy and all in one place.
only 15% of participants know all of the professors in their major while the rest only interact with few professors. And more than half of participants never have interaction with their chair or even have no idea who their chair is.
64% of participants think it's important to seek advice from professor outside of their major for project or academic propose. But because of the unfamiliar, it is hard to know, connect, and communicate with them so 22.5% of participants would rather get advice from professor in their major than other major even though they are more expert in their field.
Which widen the gap between major and the gap between student.
While email is the most used tool to schedule meeting, it takes a lot of time and effort, not only writing but also waiting for the response. It requires too many emails per one schedule.
It’s better to prepare question prior to the meeting but sometime it’s hard to ask the right question especially with unfamiliar professor. It takes a lot of effort and can cause nervousness

Interview for Professors

Interview questions for professors:

We interviewed a total of 8 professors from different majors and get information.

Survey Key Insight

We used Affinity Map to help us organized information and get some key insights.

Professors:

Professors will use different tools and ways to help themselves develop schedules, which will help them plan their schedules more clearly.
Using zoom to meet with student is convenient for screen sharing and able to see facial expression. However, most professor don't like zoom meeting as less interactions.
Professors always have students from other major in most of the class and often get contacted by student especially professor who are from SCAD pro and gives lecture.
Professors usually give students 15-30 minutes. More depends on what is being talked about and what is needed. Simpler questions can be solved by email. Professors will also give students an adjusted Office hour, depending on the situation, but need to be booked and informed in advance to ensure availability.
Different professors have different attitudes towards walk in. However, all of them suggest students to make an appointment in advance to ensure that they can get a chance to communicate with each other.
All professors love it when students ask questions and are happy to help them solve them. For students who are unfamiliar/other majors, professors prefer to get some introductory and background information before emailing them, which can help them give useful advice.
Student in the class usually find professor’s office hour in the syllabus and blackboard, and student outside of class usually email professor to ask for their availabilities.

User Journey Map

HMW Questions

Ideas Generation

Ideas generation (Dot vote)

Feature evaluation & MoScow testing