Radical PhD
Problem: Radical PhD is a set of tools, forums, and customized coaching to support marginalized and underserved PhD students on their academic journey. The process of obtaining a PhD can be unclear and challenging, and students are often subject to isolation and a lack of affordable resources. Additionally, these students are seen as unqualified or if they seek help.
Solution: With a budget of 200-300 hours, our team focused on static and dynamic website changes to impact users interaction with Radical PhD, increase awareness and illicit a call to action for users by offering free resources and ending the stigma behind asking for help.
Methods: Competitive audit, directed storytelling, user/customer journey maps, feature cards, wireframes, Kano Analysis survey
Tools: Sketch, Illustrator
Background
Radical PhD is a set of tools, forums, and customized coaching to support PhD students on their academic journey. The process of obtaining a PhD can be unclear and challenging, especially for women, POCI community members and LGBTQIA. Radical PhD believes coaching should be affordable and accessible for all students. In order to leverage their resource and attract new students, Radical PhD has set the following goals:
Provide resistance-free support
Instill feelings of self-control
Leverage various skills of faculty coaches
development process
The development process from (L-R, top to bottom): A meeting with Dr. Aida Martinez-Freeman, founder of Radical PhD, kicked off our research; initial research and journey maps clarified the users academic journey and touch points of Radical PhD; initial ideas shown through low-fidelity feature cards were narrowed from 70 to 11; active PhD students were surveyed on the final 11 feature cards through a Kano Analysis and the results were analyzed by our team; the Kano Analysis results were translated into a graph; the radical PhD team and developers met with our team and quoted development hours to bring our feature card wireframes to life.
User Journey
The path to obtaining a PhD is arduous and can take anywhere from two to 10+ years. Below is an outline of the current path and touch points Radical PhD engages with students. The letters indicate opportunities for touch points with new website design and correspond to the site pages below.
A+B: The awareness phase of Radical PhD should occur during the students initial coursework.
C+D: Ending the stigma behind asking for help should occur during the engagement phase at the beginning of the student’s dissertation research before the largest low point in the student’s journey when they’re most likely to reach out for help.
E: Driving students to the video resources is the next opportunity to communicate Radical PhD’s value and illicit an initial call to action for the student to think about reaching out.
F: Career coaching should be initialized during the relationship building phase prior to the student graduating.
Site Redesign
The following are six new or redesigned pages that fulfill Radical PhD’s goals. Each page is annotated and the development hours to build the page are called out. Radical PhD gave our team a budget of 200-300 hours. We focused on both static and dynamic site changes to impact users interaction with Radical PhD, increase awareness and illicit a call to action for users by offering free resources and ending the stigma behind asking for help. The proposed changes account for 208 development hours. Since challenges can present themselves in the process, it was decided to have a lower number of development hours initially as to not go over budget with any unexpected challenges.
Moving forward
If more development hours were allotted, our team would like to build out the resources page more, to showcase upcoming events, mental health awareness and resources, scholarship opportunities and a section for a daily laugh and PhD humor. We would also like to work with Radical PhD on how best to reach new students through free on-campus workshops, online advertisements and partnerships with Universities.
Radical PhD is doing tremendous things for PhD students, especially those underserved and marginalized. With a few site changes, they will be able to attract new users and continue to do great things. The changes outlined address their goals to provide resistance-free support, instill feelings of self-control and leverage various skills of faculty coaches.