Insights
From interviews, workshops, and research we identified three major breakdowns:
1. Information fragmentation
Students must navigate Terra Dotta, email, PDFs, and Canvas.
2. Financial uncertainty
Students commit deposits without fully understanding total costs.
3. Emotional isolation
Students feel overwhelmed but lack clear support channels.
This bridges the gap between research and design.
What we did
We combined observation, interviews, and participatory design to understand where the system breaks.
What we found
The problem wasn’t interest—it was clarity at the moment commitment became real.
Information is fragmented, not lacking
Key finding
Steps spread across Terra Dotta, email, PDFs
No clear “what do I do next”
Students feel overwhelmed and lost
Support is inconsistent and unofficial
Faculty communication varies widely
Email becomes the default support system
No standardized ownership of experience
Students trust people over systems
Students rate returning peers as their most trusted information source
Students like real photos of housing, classrooms, daily life, and student work
Deadline awareness is inconsistent.
Artifacts
View larger
A co-design workshop is a collaborative session where the people who actually use the service—in this case, students—work with us to map their experiences, identify breakdowns, and co-create future solutions.
2 workshops
7 Students
3 Archetypes
Toolkit + Journey Map
context and goal
Make study abroad feel navigable, not overwhelming.
To uncover the reasons students withdraw from study-abroad programs, we conducted participatory co-design workshops with students at different stages of the journey.
Participants reconstructed their experiences using physical journey maps, emotional markers, and reflection journals.
This approach revealed moments of uncertainty across the process — particularly around timelines, financial planning, and access to peer knowledge — turning individual experiences into shared insights that informed our service ecosystem and blueprint.
The Co-Design Workshops help students discuss, map, ideate activities.
Students also shared emotional pain points, communication gaps, asked about deadline, support structures and resources.
Designing With Students, Not Just For Them
What this workshop unlocked
Students didn’t just need “more info.” They needed the process to feel legible: what happens next, who can help, and what “good progress” looks like after acceptance especially in the pre-departure phase where pressure peaks.
3 Key findings
Peer reassurance matters
Students wanted structured, light-touch connections to returning students to normalize anxiety and answer questions without booking meetings.
Visual proof builds confidence
Students wanted authentic photos (classrooms, housing, daily life, student work) to set expectations and reduce “unknowns.”
A simpler timeline is stress relief
Deadlines varied across programs, and students struggled to understand sequence. They asked for a unified planner or checklist view.
Impact Summary
The Key finds then helped us with the interventions we share in another case study:
More authentic visuals, a simpler timeline/checklist, and structured peer reassurance — all designed to centralize and prepare information for the students without increasing staff overhead.
