Context & Stakeholders

Ultimately we are designing a learning solution for new NYU students. However, in our analysis and research phase we have only gathered information from current students.  As they have been through the registration process before, we feel they can provide us with valuable information on common pain points and any other issues surrounding the registration process we need to design our instruction. We feel the students are our main stakeholder and their involment is absolutely critical. 

Student services teams, also called student engagement teams, are teams that assist students with a wide range of administrative tasks, including registration. For example,  Steinhardt's ALT department has a dedicated student handbook with tons of information on many topics including registration. It also provides students with the contact details of the the student services team who can answer any additional questions. We see including student services as absolutely essential not only because they would benefit from being able to refer students to a resource like the one we are proposing, but also because they are able to act as SMEs (subject matter experts). These teams know exactly what students typically struggle with during the registration process because, essentially, it is a key part of their job to provide them with assistance! Based on communication we have had with student services so far we believe they would happily back the project we are proposing. 

Our initial thoughts were that advisors would be our second biggest stakeholder after students. After doing some research however, we realised that not all advisors offer their students assistance when it comes to the registration process itself. Strictly speaking an advisors job does not include that kind of assistance and, ultimately it depends on the advisor whether they can or will be able to help. Some of them are more familiar with the process than others. Nevertheless, we have been able to gain some valuable insight from those who have assisted their students with the registration process before and so they can act as SMEs as well. We also feel that being able to refer students to such a rich resource would be beneficial to to them. We feel we would easily receive support from this group. 

NYU's registrar is in charge of everything to do with Albert including the registration infrastructure and systems students so often struggle with. Ultimately, we believe they would, act as both a reference group/SME and sponsor, but primarily a sponsor. Unfortunately we have not been able to make contact with them yet. They are a very busy department and to make things even trickier Albert's overall design, including the registration system/infrastructure , has often been criticised. We believe we would have to go about approaching them very carefully. There is a very real possibly that they would not want to be involved at all and would actually be against the project. For the sake of this project might have to view their involvement and support as a hypothetical "yes", so that we can actually design and something. 

Finally our own team is the last stakeholder! To the huge benefit of the project, we are all NYU students who have gone through the registration process before. We feel we are able to empathise with our users/learners on a very real level and that our users' needs will truly be at the heart of our design. We really want the project to succeed so that future NYU students can have perfectly smooth registration process.