STEAMbassadors Homepage
Program overview, benefits, partner information, stories, FAQ content, and the first impression of the mentorship opportunity.
PROJECT 01
Northwestern / STEAMbassadors + eLEAP UX Research
A UX research and documentation project focused on how students, parents, and staff move through STEAMbassadors and eLEAP application systems.
Project Context
The programs had a clear purpose, but the digital experience made that purpose harder to act on. Information was available, but it was not always organized around the user's first questions. Instead of moving naturally through the process, users had to pause, interpret the page, and piece together what they were supposed to do next.
My Role
I worked on the research and documentation side of the project. My role included user interviews, usability testing, participant observation, task analysis, journey mapping, workflow mapping, and turning research findings into design recommendations.
A large part of the work was taking messy research artifacts and making them useful. I focused on documenting where users lost confidence, where the system relied on hidden backend steps, and how the experience could become easier to understand from the user's point of view.
What We Evaluated
Gig Board Experience
How users found opportunities, interpreted open and closed gigs, compared listings, and understood requirements.
eLEAP Application Flows
Parent application paths, district employee nominations, staff review steps, and reimbursement or cancellation logic.
Research Questions
The research focused less on whether users liked the interface and more on whether the system helped them make decisions. We looked at where users paused, what they expected to happen next, and which parts of the experience felt unclear.
- Can users quickly understand what the program is and who it is for?
- Can applicants find eligibility, requirements, and next steps without confusion?
- Can users tell the difference between active opportunities, closed opportunities, and general program information?
- Does the system clearly explain what happens after submitting an application?
- Where does the experience depend too much on staff-side or backend knowledge?
Methods
The project used a mix of research and evaluation methods to understand the experience from both a user-facing and system-facing perspective.
User Interviews
Usability Testing
Heuristic Evaluation
Cognitive Walkthrough
Task Analysis
Journey Mapping
Workflow Mapping
Research Synthesis
The main issue was not that the platforms lacked information. The issue was that users had to interpret too much before knowing what was active, relevant, or actionable.
UX Documentation
After reviewing the research, I organized the main workflows into a cleaner documentation set. These artifacts show how the experience moves between user goals, application steps, staff review, backend logic, and final communication.
The goal of this documentation was to make the research easier to understand at a glance. Rather than leaving the work as scattered screenshots and boards, the flows were reframed as portfolio-ready UX artifacts.
Prototype
STEAMbassadors Website Redesign Prototype
Flow 01
eLEAP Parent Application Flow
A clickable Figma prototype showing the redesigned STEAMbassadors website structure and page direction.
Maps how a parent moves from awareness and interest into application, staff review, and notification.
Flow 02 STEAMbassadors Redesign Map + ConceptsShows the revised site structure, page hierarchy, content blocks, and redesign direction.
Flow 03 Cancellation LogicDocuments decision paths around registration, cancellation timing, disbursement, and reimbursement outcomes.
Flow 04 D65 Employee JourneyMaps how a district employee nominates a family and how that nomination moves into admin review and family communication.
Workflow Mapping
Several workflows involved more than one user type. Parents, staff, administrators, and district employees each had different responsibilities, but those handoffs were not always visible from the user's side.
Mapping the workflows made it easier to see where the experience depended on hidden backend logic, unclear email communication, or manual staff intervention. These were the places where users were most likely to feel unsure about what was happening.
Redesign + Site Structure
The STEAMbassadors redesign direction focused on improving hierarchy instead of replacing the whole identity of the program. The main changes were around clearer eligibility information, stronger calls to action, simpler content blocks, and a more organized site map.
This helped shift the experience from a long informational page into a clearer path where users could understand the program, check whether they were eligible, and decide what to do next.
System Logic
Some of the most important issues were not purely visual. They came from moments where the system had to decide what should happen next. For eLEAP, cancellation timing, scholarship disbursement, and reimbursement responsibility created different outcomes depending on when a user cancelled.
Documenting this logic helped clarify what the interface would eventually need to explain through status messages, confirmation screens, or staff communication.
Nomination Journey
The D65 employee journey explored a different entry point into the eLEAP system. In this path, the user is not applying for themselves. They are nominating a family that may be eligible for support.
This changed the workflow because the system needed to support three sides of the experience: the employee making the nomination, the admin reviewing it, and the family receiving information about how to continue.
Key Findings
Users understood the purpose, but not always the role.
Users could usually tell that STEAMbassadors was connected to mentorship and STEAM education, but they wanted a clearer explanation of what they would actually be doing, what was required, and what the commitment looked like.
Active and inactive opportunities needed stronger separation.
Closed gigs created confusion because users were not always sure whether they were viewing current opportunities or past examples. This made the platform feel less current and reduced trust.
Long text blocks slowed down decision-making.
Users wanted information broken into shorter sections so they could scan for eligibility, pay, location, hours, and responsibilities before giving the page more attention.
Gig listings needed a repeated structure.
Users had a harder time comparing opportunities when each gig used a different format. A consistent template would make each opportunity easier to evaluate.
Application feedback needed to be more visible.
After submitting information, users needed confirmation, next steps, and a clearer sense of when they would hear back. Without feedback, the experience felt unfinished.
Recommendations
The recommendations focused on making the experience easier to scan, easier to trust, and easier to act on. The goal was not to make the interface more complicated. The goal was to make each step feel more direct.
- Create separate areas for open gigs, closed gigs, and general program information.
- Add filters for interest area, location, date, availability, and opportunity type.
- Standardize gig pages with repeated sections for description, requirements, timeline, pay, and application steps.
- Move eligibility and role expectations higher in the page hierarchy.
- Reduce long paragraphs and use shorter, scannable content blocks.
- Add clearer confirmation states after application submission or nomination.
- Make backend-dependent moments visible through status updates, emails, or next-step messaging.
Outcome
The final documentation translated user confusion into specific design and content recommendations. The research showed that the platform did not need a full visual reset to become more usable. It needed clearer organization, stronger hierarchy, more consistent feedback, and a more direct connection between user intent and interface structure.
This project became an important early example of my UX research process because it connected observation to design direction. Instead of treating usability issues as vague feedback, the work documented where people lost certainty and what structural changes could help restore it.