V School
New Student Portal Boosts Learning Resource Discovery and Access by 84%
Summary
Problem
V School students struggled to gain and keep learning momentum because they often had difficulty finding the resources they needed for learning.
Solution
My team iteratively transformed V School's proprietary job search platform into a comprehensive student hub, providing seamless access to essential resources from enrollment through job placement. The redesigned portal earned exceptional user satisfaction, with 84% of students rating it at least 4 out of 5 for effectively connecting them with the tools and resources critical to their success.
Roles
Product designer
Product manager
Team
Product designer
Product manager
2 junior engineers
Education staff
Deliverables
Stakeholder, staff, and student research
Student journey and experience map
Heuristic analysis
User story map
User flows
Sketches
UI Design
Prototype
River Woods - Director of Student Success, V School
A scattered experience made self-starting a challenge for students
When I joined V School, I encountered a digital landscape that resembled a maze more than a learning platform. Students were bouncing between multiple applications just to access basic resources, and each program had its own unique – often contradictory – organization system.
"I never know where to find anything," one student told me during my initial research. To truly understand the problem, I put myself in their shoes, going through the entire student journey from pre-enrollment to registration. This firsthand experience revealed just how scattered our digital resources had become.
No-code solutions bought time for a complex transformation
Rather than waiting for a perfect solution, I took a two-pronged approach. First, I implemented immediate improvements using Notion, our existing documentation tool. This no-code solution helped us quickly:
Standardize program pages across courses
Create clear navigation paths
Consolidate essential resources
But I knew we needed a more comprehensive solution. That's when I spotted an opportunity in an unexpected place: Job Leads Today, an app V School had purchased for job searching. I saw its potential to become something much more valuable – a unified student hub.
The student journey at a glance
Mapping out the user stories helped to order and prioritize the work
An existing tool had untapped potential
Working with our development team, we transformed Job Leads Today into what we now call V Hub. The new homepage became a gateway to everything students need:
Direct curriculum access
Interactive progress tracking
Program calendars
Resource libraries
The New student portal homepage
To validate our approach, we included a simple two-question survey with the initial release. The results were very positive: 84% of students reported that the new homepage helped them find everything they needed. This data-informed victory confirmed we were on the right track.
Feedback survey results
Building on our success
This transformation laid the groundwork for even more exciting improvements. With positive feedback from students we moved on to build direct curriculum access within V Hub, with automated progress tracking that gives both students and staff real-time insight into learning journeys.
Lessons learned
While I learned a lot from staff about the student experience, students were not so easy to learn from. When I reached out to students they were often unresponsive. I was able to learn from a few students, but not nearly as many as would have been ideal. Staff members knew the student experience quite well, but that was no substitute for learning directly from students. If I could go back, I would make a greater effort to find ways to learn from more students.
