Jax Wechsler

Project background:

The Australian College of Theology (ACT) is an educational body that supports affiliated colleges to deliver theological courses and supports theological research degrees. The ACT represents 17 independent colleges, supports them with meeting their governmental requirements, and supervises their Masters and PhD students.

The brief:

Develop a communications strategy for the ACT to better support students and colleges and also deliver on the ACT strategic priorities.

Approach and deliverables:

Initially some workshops were conducted with ACT staff to explicate assumptions held about the various stakeholders in the ACT service eco-system.

A review of all existing communications was next carried out.

Qualitative research was conducted with ACT office staff and 18 representatives of the various external stakeholder groups including registrars, coordinators, students and alumni.

The research was synthesized into a series of personas and journey maps  documenting the research and communicating the needs and pain-points of the different stakeholders, as well as opportunities for on and off-line service improvement.

A co-creation workshop was conducted with ACT college staff and external college staff and students.

The main outputs of the project included; a research report, journey maps and personas as tools for the ACT, and a communications strategy including some high-level design concepts.

This project was undertaken as an independent consultant under Jax’s consulting brand, Sticky Design Studio.

According to my contact on the Board, the personas and journey maps have remained on the boardroom walls and are being referred to within executive meetings. The personas helped the ACT to understand that their audience was not homogeneous, providing some frameworks for understanding their different responsibilities and needs.

Example artefacts (click for larger view)