University Housing Contracts

We overhauled the contract experience for all university housing

Duration

2016–2019

Role

Chief Creative Officer, NextThought

Design Team

Samuel Chinchilla, Shane Jensen, Madison Kay, Michael McLaughlin, Hayes Cristen

Introduction

In 2016, The University of Oklahoma asked us to overhaul the user experience for their university housing contracts. We started with the residence halls and launched our first iteration of the new contract experience a few months later. Over the next two years, we extended our reach across all university housing options (Freshman Residence Halls, Residential Colleges, Athletics, Honors, Cross Village, Campus Apartments, etc.) and all terms (Fall, Spring, Summer).

These different dorms and apartments were built at various times (over decades) and had inconsistent amenities, processes, and requirements. Developing a standardized system that had a consistent approach but could also flexibly accommodate significant differences was a real challenge.

I worked closely in the trenches with the housing staff to solve the tactical requirements of enrolling thousands of students in shared housing while also coordinating and selling the approach to university executives to address their admissions, recruitment, and retention objectives. I led our internal design team and external contractors to help execute the design direction. I coordinated with the NextThought dev team and university IT staff to build the application and tie it into university systems. And I worked with university marketing and communications teams to support their promotional efforts.

Old Housing Contract

Here's a snapshot of a few (out of many) screens from the old app.

New Contract Flow

This is an early iteration on the contract flow process. It's simplified, missing some things that we addressed in the final version, but it was really helpful working through requirements with the OU team.

Page Thumbnails

Block-level functionality thumbnails were really helpful for discussing general requirements and flow with OU without getting distracted by details too early in the process.

Wireframes

Early wireframes of key stages of the contract process.

Visual Explorations

A sampling of visual explorations. We did a lot...

Tracking Progress

At one point, we were working on contracts for 5 different housing locations at the same time. We tracked progress on "the green monster" where we mapped out the flows for each contract. Change requests were marked with sticky notes and the resulting design updates were taped on top of the screen stack.

Final designs. Let's begin a new contract!

Manage contracts and stay up to date on Housing & Food Services news, announcements, and helpful resources.

Location and amenity selection—we want Dunham and Headington Colleges.

This page shows available housing options based on your classification. In this instance, Freshman, Honors, and Athletics accommodations are not available.

Select a Community

The residential colleges offer unique living/learning communities.

Choose and rank floor plans in order of preference.

Students aren't guaranteed to receive their desired floor plan and must sort the options by order of preference.

Roommate Selection: Request, Browse, Send Messages

Request a friend, browse profiles and chat, or have a roommate assigned for you.

We need a Meal Plan. How hungry are you?

Tips and other helpful information to choose the right meal plan. Students have an opportunity to change their plan a couple of weeks into the semester.

Make sure everything is right and then sign and submit!