RMIT Pathways Finder

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  • 2020

  • Digital
    Web Design and Development

Designed By:

Commissioned By:

RMIT University

Designed In:

Australia

The RMIT Pathways platform offers a smart alternative for Australians to easily navigate to a degree without the need for an ATAR. Designed by subject-matter experts from education, accessibility, design and technology, the web-platform simplifies what has been a manual, paper-based, labour-intensive and complex process, that potentially discouraged further study.


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  • CHALLENGE
  • SOLUTION
  • IMPACT
  • MORE
  • University pathways make higher education more accessible, by enabling students to move through vocational and tertiary levels of study to reach the desired qualification. These educational pathways are varied and complex, and traditionally, resources have been paper-based. This required substantial time investment to navigate, burdening administrative staff and deterring students from continuing or embarking on further study. To be a success, the final product needed to meet the demands of prospective students and staff interacting with the tool directly in a digital context, as well as encompassing logic that accurately mapped a large and complex database of potential pathway outputs.

  • For this project, Prime Motive and RMIT formed a multidisciplinary team, collated insights and collaboratively framed a problem statement: —“How can we simplify and improve access to pathway information for those wishing to attend university?”— Building on design research the team user-tested a mobile-first paper prototype, the insights of which allowed the team to craft a unique solution that transformed a complicated task into a joyful journey of discovery, allowing potential students to easily comprehend the pathway options available to them at RMIT. The subsequent functional prototype featured a clean interface designed to WCAG AAA accessibility standards.

  • Education is at the heart of Victoria’s economy, but more importantly tertiary education is essential for many students to enter their aspirational careers. Building on RMIT’s key positioning as the biggest dual sector university in Australia, the Pathways online tool will illuminate the pathways into higher education for many students who previously may not have thought it a possibility for them. It streamlines and simplifies a complex process, providing all essential information in one place. This allows students to instead focus on their dreams and those decisions that will make their future a brighter and better educated one.

  • This online tool is unique to RMIT, going beyond what any other Australian university offers. The process of design and final platform follows closely to what you might find in leading product development. A redesign of the pathways experience meant leaving behind a complex paper-based, manual service which cost time and money and often created confidence gaps for both staff and students. Today, the tool functions intuitively for the user, requiring no onboarding and accessible to a wide audience. It uses familiar RMIT design language but in an entirely new context. It was built with cutting-edge backend technology, only commercially available in the last year, and using a kit of reusable components and interactions that can be used again in future projects. Due to building out an algorithm that encompasses all pathways information innately, both information centre staff and students now can have increased confidence in the accuracy of pathways information.