Thirst Studios

Challenge Craft an integrated student portal that enables students to get on with learning.
Solution Close consultation throughout and thorough testing to ensure a robust end product.
Impact DeakinSync is an invaluable tool for students and staff across all Deakin campuses.

The background

Deakin University is a well known Australian public university with campuses across the state of Victoria, serving around 60,000 students each year.

The challenge

The university approached us in August 2013 to provide UX consulting and design services for a groundbreaking new university portal for students.

The product - DeakinSync - would constitute a one-stop solution for students, furnishing them with everything they need to successfully navigate their way through their time at university. From calendars and unit site access to online collaboration, payments and a suite of software tools, the tool needed to be designed from the ground-up with the wide variety of student needs placed firmly at front-of-mind.

Sketching out concepts for the Dashboard

Our approach

The platform needed to capture data from a wide variety of university systems, yet be flexible enough to deliver personalised content that was relevant to each individual student depending on their course, campus, and even the time of day that they would be logged in.

Following an extensive period of consultation workshops and interviews with various student user groups and university stakeholders, we designed and produced an intelligent interface that enables the delivery of personalised content across multiple device resolutions.

Multiple rounds of prototyping and testing were undertaken, with Thirst working predominantly on-site within Deakin’s Business Solutions team, delivering product strategy, research, UX/UI design and front end development.

We continued to consult throughout the development stages, working closely with Deakin’s own tech team to ensure that the product vision remained intact and was successfully delivered as originally intended.

The impact

The product has been an enormous success, with hugely positive feedback from students and university staff alike. It’s quickly become an invaluable, key tool for all students and staff across all Deakin campuses.

DeakinSync has also been widely praised as a well-designed, leading, innovative solution amongst many other universities and research organisations across Australia.