As we analyze and implement digital tools to improve the student experience, we strive to apply a human-centered, empathetic approach toward our designs. SSEI has formed a team dedicated to Student Engagement. We seek to gather input on digital initiatives and tools, but more importantly, to really understand how students feel about ideas and concepts throughout the design and implementation process.
We have adopted a user-centered design approach, which informs the way we go about obtaining input from students and other stakeholders. Critical to this is the idea that meaningful input is not a finite or a one-way conversation. A core value that we hold is users can and should participate in the design process for their own experiences.
Our staff is a collaboration between the SSEI project team, the Office of Student Enrollment and Account Management (SEAM), and the Technology Innovation Center (TIC).
Kim Le is a business analyst with SSEI. She conducts and helps coordinate user interviews with students and staff about questions related to their technology experience at JHU. Current projects include the academic advising experience and the digital experience platform.
Emily Ades is a user experience designer at the Technology Innovation Center, working with SSEI on the digital experience platform. She began her career as a graphic designer in JHU’s creative services office, shifting to UX after developing a love for front-end design and user engagement. She is focused on helping to deliver an intuitive, seamless experience for the wide variety of Hopkins students who will use the platform.
Adeline Anne Krieger is a UX Design Intern with SSEI. Current projects include reaching out to students and staff for feedback related to their technology experience at JHU, coordinating user interviews, and synthesizing data and user insights. Adeline is a Master of Business Administration student at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and Master of Arts in Design Leadership student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is a human-centered designer with a passion for crafting impactful brand strategies. Adeline leverages user research to design brand and activation strategies, combined with compelling visual brand identity and intuitive UX design.
Heather Laiter is a UX Design Intern with SSEI. Current projects include facilitating user interviews, focus groups and design thinking workshops with students, faculty, and developers to derive strategic insights and define opportunity areas for JHU digital products to deliver high-impact solutions. Heather is a Master of Business Administration student at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and a Master of Arts in Design Leadership student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is a human-centered designer who excels at the intersection of design, business, and human experience. She is deeply committed to delivering pragmatic, value-driven work that positively impacts both the organization and the community it serves.
Bao-Tran Nguyen is a UX Design Intern with SSEI. Current projects include facilitating user interviews, synthesizing user data, and analyzing and planning quantitative research. Bao-Tran is working towards her BA in Psychology at Johns Hopkins University. She uses her knowledge of human psychology, alongside her experiences in various student startups, to generate insights to create experiences benefiting both organizational stakeholders and individual users.
The Student Services Excellence Initiative team works on a variety of projects to improve student service delivery in administrative areas at JHU. We also work with designers and IT to improve the Hopkins digital experience related to these services across our diverse campuses. The SSEI Student Advisory Committee was established in 2021 to ensure the student voice is heard in decisions that might affect their experience at Hopkins. The committee seeks membership with broad representation of students across all divisions, levels, and backgrounds.
Advisory committee members discuss designs and and participate in meetings, design thinking sessions, virtual demos and focus groups. They also help with communications campaigns to get the word out about changes that will impact the student experience.
If you have opinions and thoughts about how technology is used at JHU, and if you’re generally interested in learning more about UX design and the design thinking process — consider joining the committee!
The 2022-2023 SSEI Student Advisory Committee Cohort is as follows:
In addition to our advisory committee members, we also have a pool of students contacts across the university enterprise, who have expressed interest in providing user input on various digital projects. Opportunities range from quick surveys to in-depth user interviews.
If you’re a student who is interested in participating in user interviews and/or longer-term design sessions, we’d love to hear from you! Please fill out this quick intake form to get on our contacts list for opportunities that may come up.
If you’re interested in joining the Student Advisory Committee, contact Kim Le (kle8 @ jhu.edu) for more details about how to join!