_about
Attending a religious university like BYU offers a unique experience, but balancing rigorous academics with religious life and community expectations can be demanding. The requirement for single students to live in approved housing, adhering to specific moral and ethical standards, adds another layer of complexity to the already challenging apartment hunt.
Fortunately, the Off-Campus Housing Office (OCHO) is there to help students, landlords, and staff navigate this unique environment. OCHO assists students in finding approved housing, mediates conflicts between roommates and landlords, and provides education on BYU's Contracted Housing regulations.
_the challenge
While the OCHO website's poor navigation frustrates students, a user-friendly redesign is only half the battle. OCHO officials themselves struggle with scattered data, clunky processes, and an outdated internal system.
To ensure our redesign addressed real user pain points, we focused on key questions:
_research focus
What are the key actions or tasks that students frequently try to complete when using the OCHO website?
How comfortable are students using the current housing portal?
How easy is it for students to find the information they need on the website?
What are the everyday tasks OCHO staff typically do when managing the housing portal?
How do they currently access and manage student and landlord information?
What are the biggest pain points or frustrations OCHO staff have with the current data management system?
Contextual Interviews
I conducted contextual interviews with a variety of users, including housing managers, housing officials, landlords, and students, to get a real sense of their experiences with the current website. During these sessions, I watched participants try to complete common tasks on the site, which helped uncover pain points and gave us a clearer picture of their goals, limitations, and what they expect from a redesign.
Findings
Students prefer using Facebook Marketplace and housing groups over the OCHO website.
Housing listings on the OCHO website are often outdated.
Required vs. optional activities weren’t clearly marked, leaving students confused about what to complete.
OCHO officials organize and retrieve information manually from online storage services.
OCHO officials use legacy software for data management and retrieval.
Surveys
We surveyed students to understand their housing search habits and OCHO website experience. The surveys covered:
Demographics: Age, gender, year (to understand user profiles)
Search behavior: How they find housing, what matters most
OCHO website: Their experience, likes/dislikes, and improvement ideas
This helped us identify student needs and pain points.
Findings
Freshman students use the website more often than seniors and other students.
Most students rate their experience with the website as neutral or dissatisfying.
Text contrast didn’t meet accessibility standards in some areas.
Students mainly use the website to change and approve their address.
Students rarely use the website to keep track of listings they like.
Personas
Sai created personas based on the data from interviews and surveys. Each persona represented a unique user type, highlighting their needs, challenges, and goals. This helped us prioritize features and functions that would be most valuable for each persona. Using person
Journey Maps
Based on the personas, I created journey maps for OCHO officers, students, landlords, and athletic staff. These maps helped us visualize the current system, pointing out inefficiencies and user frustrations. They highlighted where housing officials and students struggled to find information and revealed key touchpoints needing improvement. Creating these maps also helped us empathize with users, allowing us to better understand the emotions they experienced throughout their journey.
Findings
We identified several areas with opportunities for improvement:
OCHO Staff: User-friendly verifications, at-a-glance info, synced notifications, multi-issue assignment, and improved notes.
Students: Clearer waiver process and enhanced housing listings.
Athletic Staff: More self-service options.
Landlords: Less repetitive data entry.
_ideation
We brainstormed solutions for OCHO's website based on our research to tackle user pain points. We focused more on generating ideas than feasibility and identified a few key solutions:
Introducing an integrated dashboard
Create a user-friendly dashboard that provides housing officials with a single, comprehensive view of students' information, housing status, housing choices, availability, and relevant details.
Redesigning the student portal to make it more user-friendly
Prioritize user experience by applying heuristics and catering to student needs. Build a search engine with location, price, amenities, and customizable filters for student priorities.
Creating a centralized system for storing and managing documents
Using a cloud-based document management system. This would allow OCHO officers to access documents from anywhere, and it would also provide a secure way to store sensitive information.
User Feedback & Revised Design Goals
After sharing our ideas with key stakeholders, we got some solid feedback. They were all in on the Integrated Dashboard and Student Portal Redesign, recognizing that these would have the biggest impact on students and staff. However, the Centralized Document Management idea was put on hold. It was just too big to tackle with the resources available. While they agreed it would be a great long-term improvement, it wasn’t feasible in the current phase.
Sketches & Iterations
Potential layouts
I explored different dashboard layouts:
Quick-Glance Dashboard: Fast access to key student data.
Drilldown Dashboard: A more detailed view with layered navigation
Task-Centered Dashboard: Organized around common workflows.
After discussions with the dev team and OCHO staff, we chose the Quick-Glance Dashboard for its balance of speed, usability, and cost-effectiveness.
hi-fi wireframes
Features
The quick-glance dashboard design combined a balance of speed, usability, and cost-effective development.
Student Summary: Displays data on student housing status (on-campus, off-campus, living with family) with gender breakdowns.
Waivers & Appeals Management: Tracks waivers submitted, appeals, and extension requests, categorized by approval status.
Facilities Overview: Lists different housing facilities with details like total units and spaces available.
Approved Listings: A section for approved housing listings, including different contract types.
Contracts Management: Tracks contract statuses, including signed, pending, in-process, and denied applications.
Navigation & Administration Tools: A sidebar menu provides access to contracted facilities, affected students, waivers, and vacancy listings.
Features
The Administrator Page provides a clear and organized way to track and update admin roles. It ensures that OCHO staff can quickly manage permissions, monitor changes, and keep records up to date.
Administrator Management: Displays a list of administrators with their names, roles, update types, and status.
Filtering & Sorting: Allows sorting by full name, administrator type, update type, effective date, expiration date, and updated by.
User Details: Includes usernames, assigned roles (Official, Staff, Athletic Office), and timestamps of updates.
Navigation Panel: Links to other administrative sections such as Contracted Facilities, Affected Students, Waivers, and Vacancy Listings.
Audit Trail: Shows when an administrator's details were last updated and by whom.
Features
The student residential addresses helps students stay compliant with BYU’s housing rules by providing clear steps for address verification and updates.
Current Residential Address Display: Shows the student’s contracted address, entry date, and landlord verification status.
Change Residential Address: Allows students to update their address by searching for a BYU-contracted facility or entering a non-contracted address.
Marital Status Update: Provides an option to update marital status, which impacts housing policy requirements.
Compliance Indicators: Highlights whether the student’s address meets university housing policies.
Since my time as a student worker ended before the full design and implementation, I couldn’t finish designing the portal. However, the research, wireframes, and usability insights provide a strong roadmap for future iterations
Findings
A/B testing to validate navigation improvements.
Ongoing feedback collection from students and OCHO staff.
Exploring self-service options for students, athletic staff, and landlord
While I couldn’t see this project through to completion, the groundwork laid will help future teams build a more intuitive and efficient housing portal for BYU students and OCHO staff.