University of Auckland Student Services Portal
•Education •Academic Services •Personal Project
TL;DR
Redesign of the University of Auckland’s student services portal after 96% of surveyed students reported dissatisfaction.
Delivered a responsive, customizable platform that simplifies navigation and streamlines access to essential academic tools.
Introduction
Context
The University of Auckland’s student services portal is a critical touchpoint between students and the university, used for enrollment, grades, fees, timetables, and other essential tasks. Despite its importance, 48 out of 50 surveyed past and present students reported frustration with the platform. Scattered information, a dated interface, and poor mobile usability made even basic actions unnecessarily difficult. For a university regarded as New Zealand’s premier institution, the outdated portal represented a poor digital experience, particularly for international students and partners.
Problem Statement
Students rely on the services portal for essential tasks, yet nearly all report frustration with its outdated, confusing design. This creates unnecessary friction in academic life, highlighting the urgent need for a more user-friendly, responsive, and accessible solution.
How might we modernize the University of Auckland’s student services portal to create a simpler, more responsive, and accessible experience for students?
Goal
Redesign the University of Auckland’s student services portal into a responsive, user-friendly platform that simplifies navigation, streamlines access to essential tools, and helps students manage their academic life with confidence and ease.
Research
Existing Service Audit Audit
An extensive audit of the current student services portal revealed numerous pain points throughout the user experience. Users encountered information overload immediately upon logging in, broken links, repeated content, and a confusing, illogical information architecture. These issues made even basic tasks unnecessarily difficult, highlighting a clear need for a redesign.
User Personas
Based on the research and user interviews, I created five personas that capture common patterns of phone use and pain points:
User Stories
Derived from the personas, user stories helped identify key tasks, frustrations, and exit points, informing the redesign of user flows.
Ideal flows were then created to serve as benchmarks, guiding the portal redesign to ensure efficient, intuitive task completion for all student types.
Competitive Audit Direct Competitors
A competitive audit of academic portals was conducted across universities and educational services. Most traditional university portals performed poorly, even at prestigious institutions.
Findings
Educational Platforms: Tools like Canvas, designed for student-teacher interactions, provided insights into streamlined, task-focused user flows.
Project Management Software: Software like Deltek, which is highly customizable for architecture project management, offered lessons in handling complex workflows and supporting users at different engagement levels.
Findings from these audits informed the design of a portal that is flexible, intuitive, and supportive of the diverse needs of its users.
Ideation
Information Architecture
An adjacency matrix was created to guide the redesign of the portal’s information architecture. Given the large number of services offered, it was essential to identify which items should appear on the home page as primary categories and which should be organised within subcategories of the primary categories.
From the matrix, a series of concise, logical categories were established and organized into a left-aligned menu, forming the portal’s primary information architecture.
A second, customizable layer allows users to personalize the homepage by placing frequently used services at the forefront. This personalization is informed by the competitive audit, which highlighted that different students rely on different features—for example, a third-year student familiar with campus may not need constant access to the campus map.
User Flow
The redesigned user flow prioritizes efficiency and accessibility:
Most-used functions, such as maps and timetables, are prominently displayed on the homepage.
Less frequent functions, such as official records, are stored in clearly defined sidebar sections.
Users can customize their homepage, tailoring the experience to their specific needs for faster, more intuitive navigation.
Early Concepts & Sketches
Wireframing began with pen-and-paper sketches, focusing on three key elements:
Taskbar housing main categories
Customizable homepage space
Student-specific information
Various experiments explored scale, placement, and proximity to optimize usability and visual clarity.
Low-Fidelity Prototype
The final lo-fi prototype implemented a single, left-aligned taskbar to organize less frequently used categories, maximizing space for primary functions. Customization controls were added to the top-right of the header, alongside a compact notification bell, keeping the interface clean and uncluttered.
Login and Home Page Variants
Customisation Controls
Brand Guideline
Existing University of Auckland branding was retained to ensure consistency across digital platforms, focusing on color palette and typography to maintain a cohesive institutional identity.
Final Design
The final design builds directly on the low-fidelity wireframes, which proved effective in organizing and distributing the numerous student services functions.
Primary and Secondary Tiers
Frequently used functions are immediately visible on the homepage, while less commonly accessed features are organized into clear, intuitive categories in the sidebar.
Upon initial sign-up, unpopulated features—such as timetables and grades—are greyed out, with contextual guidance directing students on the steps required to activate them, such as completing enrollment.
After successful enrollment, new students are greeted with a default layout highlighting the most relevant features, such as timetable, campus map, and events.
Customizable Homepage
The design introduces a customizable homepage, allowing students to tailor their experience by prioritizing the categories most relevant to them—whether enrollment, grades, timetables, or campus maps.
This personalization ensures that essential tools are always front and center, reducing navigation time and creating a more intuitive, student-centered platform.
By combining thoughtful information hierarchy with a flexible, user-driven layout, the redesign transforms the portal into a responsive, easy-to-use tool that supports students throughout their academic journey.
Designed & Developed
by Zac Low