Building and leading UX research, testing, and strategy from the ground up at Adtalem — turning student and faculty insight into measurable improvements across the enrollment experience, and into new AI-powered products.
Student Financial Aid Experience
Across educational platforms, financial aid is often the most confusing and frustrating step for students. The client wanted a deeper understanding of attitudes and behaviors at each stage of the financial aid process — to see where the university could improve design, content, and communications to reduce inquiries to customer care and curb student enrollment drop-off.
I created a user research plan to align on hypotheses and testing approaches. Because we needed quantitative attitudinal data, we ran an in-depth attitudinal survey across three student segments — undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral. Those insights informed a user journey map and follow-on focus groups and interviews, and guided optimization of UI components within the financial aid experience based on real user needs and feedback.
This university client had never performed UX research or created student journey maps at this caliber. Within three months, they reduced financial-aid-related calls to customer care by 5% (against a 2.5% KPI), with enrollment drop-off insights still in process. The work secured additional funding to expand UX research, testing, and strategy across all student enrollment experience projects.
Student financial aid journey map — end-to-end
Faculty Generative AI CoPilot
Build a generative AI CoPilot concept to help university faculty review and grade student assignments — making their review process more efficient and their feedback more effective than the current process. Secondarily, shape it into a go-to-market product.
I created a quantitative and qualitative research and testing plan to understand both the attitudinal and behavioral aspects of faculty’s current grading experience, plus their attitudes toward and exposure to AI tools. Through surveys, desirability testing, usability testing, and comparison testing, we shaped the architecture, design, content flow, and AI content — improving the UI experience and AI accuracy to build the trust, efficiency, and effectiveness needed for user buy-in.
Guided from concept to execution by UX research and testing, 75% of the faculty sample chose the AI CoPilot experience over their current grading process — driving stakeholder buy-in and funding to implement the tool in 2025, and confirming a go-to-market product launch for 2026.
Faculty AI CoPilot — walkthrough
Research that earned buy-in, funding, and a product roadmap.
Double the 2.5% KPI — achieved within three months.
Of the faculty sample, over their current grading process.
CoPilot implementation in 2025; product launch in 2026.
“I had the pleasure of working with Dove on several large projects at Adtalem, and she truly stood out as both a UX research expert and a natural leader. Not only did she bring her deep expertise to the table, but she also took the time to educate the team on research best practices, collaborate effectively, and help build the research process and the team from the ground up.”
“I’ve learned so much from her. She made a real effort to understand both the business goals and user needs. Dove has an incredible ability to pull out actionable insights from research and knows exactly which methods will yield the best results.”