College Decision Road Map | Design is within the fibers.

A map-like brochure aimed at helping students -- particularly low-income students and students of color -- navigate the difficult terrain of what major to study, what school to attend and how to pay for it.

“college decision road map”, road, map, “brochure design,” “best brochure design”, “how to pay for college”, “do i want to go to college”

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College Decision Road Map

Description

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A map-like brochure aimed at helping students — particularly low-income students and students of color — navigate the difficult terrain of what major to study, what school to attend and how to pay for it.

The Education Trust is a Washington, D.C.-based education advocacy organization working to close the achievement gap that separates low-income students and students of color from their more affluent and white peers. Our higher education division wanted to produce a printed piece that would help students navigate the difficult terrain of deciding what college to attend and how to pay for it. Inspired by the term roadmap, we designed a customized brochure that parses the decision-making process in ten steps. In addition to breaking the decision-making process down into steps, sections are color-blocked to reflect main sections of the process (interests of study, school characteristics, how to pay for school, etc.). Eventually, the roadmap unfolds into a poster that inspires college completion and defines financial aid-related terms. Our target audiences are high school students—particularly low-income and students of color— and school counselors. Our client wanted to provide important financial aid-related terms and definitions. Knowing that school counselors love posters, we created an inspirational poster that also displays the important financial aid terms students and counselors need.

Personas

Journey Analysis

Guiding Principles

Many of the students that we are targeting know about the importance of college, but few use the internet to learn about resources such as College Results Online (CRO).

Students would be more likely to engage with these resources if there was a printed version easily available to them.
Building interest takes consistent outreach and engagement with both school counselors and students.

PHASES

Search

How are students finding CRO and other online sites for college ratings and affordability?

Explore/Absorb

What is the first question a student should ask themselves when making a decision about college?

Should we use social media? Why or why not? What are the next steps to sharing this guide offline?

Follow

How do we follow up with students and school counselors about their awareness of college decisions?

USER GOALS

Search

Design the resource for students and school counselors as a guide during online research.

Explore

Start very broad in the early steps. Then get more specific, using CRO as a resource.

TOUCHPOINTS

Search

Ed Trust national conferences, school events, panel discussions, presentations to school counselors, after-school events with students.

Explore/Absorb

Study various custom-designed folded brochures.

Build a prototype in-house.

Follow

Test, revise, and review.

Prototype and Testing

We tested the prototype on a middle-school student. We learned that terms like “bachelor’s degree” or “associate’s degree” were confusing. Instead, terms like “2-year degree” and “4-year degree” were more clear.

We also testing on a high school student. We learned that they were more likely to engage with the material if it was colorful, and was clearly written.

Final printed product

Folds out to a poster, with more financial aid information.

Date

June 7, 2013

College Decision Road Map