UX Architect | Technical Lead | Project Lead
Project Overview: In late 2010, Brown Mackie College decided to embark on an ambitious 1:1 iPad program for students. They wanted to migrate from expensive physical textbooks to new electronic textbooks in the interest of saving students roughly $3500 over the course of their program in book fees. The iPad presented a solution as both an eTextbook reader as well as a research and communication device. The challenge presented to IT was how to distribute and onboard/train students to use their iPad and provide a branded, student focused out of box experience. Over the course of the program which ran from 2012 to 2016, Brown Mackie successfully deployed over 30,000 iPad devices to students.
The Problem: Among several other challenges to overcome was the volume, distance, and frequency in which these iPads needed to be distributed to students. At the time, Brown Mackie College had 28 campuses across 15 different states. They were enrolling around 1500 new students every single month and the college administration was adamant that students receive their devices and get fully oriented to how it works by their 4th week in the program. The iPads needed to be delivered to the student on campus and ideally feature something unique that made them “BMC iPads”.
Research Findings:
Student Survey: We surveyed roughly 15% of the student body across the country in 2010 and found that while many of them had cell phones they were ‘dumb’ phones not smartphones; many of them were not familiar with Apple, iPhone, iPad, or Macintosh. Almost none of them had tablets. We also determined from the survey that while most students had access to high speed Internet, fewer than 65% had a laptop.
Logistical Challenges: While there were 1500 new students on average every month, it was often the first week of class before you could lock in that number. Estimated enrollment numbers were simply too inaccurate when placing orders with Apple. The other challenge we discovered as we began working with Apple is that they are very much a ‘just in time’ manufacturer and hold very little inventory in the channel. They build devices based on purchase orders and ship from China, which means their lead time from order to delivery is 14-18 days. Product transitions were challenging as new iterations of iPad would be in high demand and could be difficult to get at first. Apple also made it clear that as the devices roll off the assembly line there was no way to configure these to be special ‘BMC iPads’.
Technological Challenges: Brown Mackie College had a specific Cisco-based network access control solution for authenticating devices onto their wireless network. This was an Enterprise solution that required special configuration and software to work and it didn’t support Apple’s iOS right out of the box. We developed a workaround for joining the wireless network but it was far from easy and straight-forward for the less tech savvy student or instructor.
Persona:
Project Pilot Phase & Initial Takeaways:
In 2011 we were given the opportunity to conduct a three-month iPad pilot program with one of the campuses. The Miami location was chosen due to their eager faculty and younger student demographic. We wanted the conditions to be right for this to have a chance of success and while we knew it would take another year to prepare the faculty at most of the locations to embrace the new technology, Miami was enthusiastic and ready to go. Ultimately the pilot program was successful but it started off very rough. We had the following takeaways:
Preparing the iPads for first use when out-of-box “factory default” was challenging, particularly when leading a group of students of different skill levels through the process. Some were familiar with Apple products and had an AppleID while others did not.
Wireless issues were everywhere. We had adequate WiFi coverage but students needed to authenticate to the wireless network using their student portal ID and password. We discovered during the training session that roughly a third of the students had no idea what that password was.
Once the students were online with their devices, we had to step them through the process of downloading Apps from the App Store. This took forever.
Configuring email settings was time consuming and entering things like server names were error prone.
We had set aside 1 hour of class time for iPad orientation. After spending the entire 4 hour class setting up iPads with 22 students and still running out of time, we determined that the entire experience was not where it needed to be. Students were paying for this course and we just wasted 4 hours of their class time setting up iPads. Not a good ROI for them and the instructors and I were a sweaty exhausted mess!
UX Challenges:
Broken iPads: Once in a while a student would find a way to break their iPad straight out of the box. This often occurred because they knocked it off the desk or dropped it, thus shattering the screen. We developed a solution with Apple where every iPad we provided was covered under AppleCare+ so any student who broke the iPad screen would get a replacement the same day.
Data Entry & Configuration: To address the issues with Data Entry mistakes and to bypass a lot of the username and password challenges we had experienced in the pilot, we used Apple’s mobileconfig profile option to present the student with a step by step guide for entering only the information they had to provide and automatically filled in things like WiFi security settings or email server information.
Branding & Out of Box: We developed a standard configuration for BMC iPads that included branded wallpaper, pre-installed applications, and links to common student resources including the student portal, eTextbook vendor site, the student help desk, and iTunes U course content.
Ongoing Support: We discovered after the program was a few months in that there was just not enough class time to show students every single feature and use of their iPad. We also noticed that as students got more familiar with their device, they had more questions and wanted to do even more. We developed an iPad Handbook using iTunes U course manager to meet this need. The course was dynamic and as the iPad and the school changed over time, we could adapt the course to show new features and tips/tricks for getting the most out of their technology investment.
Logistics & Process Design:
Monthly repeating process for ordering and delivering iPads to new students. This ran every month from early 2012 through mid 2016.
Solution:
iPad Orientation Course via iTunes U
Results:
Lessons Learned:
App Store Preinstall Issues: We thought a solution would be to pre-load iPad apps like iBooks, VitalSource Textbooks, and iTunes U using a generic AppleID. While this provided students with a clean out of box solution for accessing their Apps, it actually ended up turning into a UX nightmare once those Apps gained updates on the App Store. We did not anticipate that students would be prompted for the password for that generic AppleID when app updates were released. As a result, we were inundated with tickets and emails from students asking for the password or for assistance in deleting the Apps and re-downloading a new copy using their own AppleIDs. This forced us to sit down and re-work the pre-configuration process and change the way we did App downloads. We found a better solution by providing custom hyperlink icons on the Home Screen that directed students to download the Apps from the App Store using their own AppleID instead.
The User Experience starts before they get their iPad: Ultimately we needed to admit that we couldn’t wait for the student to get their iPad in their hands before we began orienting them to their device. From the very first class, a full three weeks before they would receive their iPads, the instructor started preparing them for ‘iPad day’. This included changes like scheduling computer lab time to make sure every student had their AppleID created, knew their student portal login, and had redeemed their first eTextbook. This allowed the student to already be familiar with these tools on a computer before moving the workflow to the iPad. Once the students got their iPad, they were better prepared to enter their passwords, access their textbook, and configure their email. This cut iPad orientation down to the 1 hour we originally set as the goal.