By Robin Low
ALUMNI EXPERIENCE

X is the variable to be solved
When is the last time you had a great experience with a company
as a consumer, and experience that captured your heart mind and
spirit?
Experience is nothing new, but in today’s context, it more than
just products, services. It includes customer’s comments in our
connected economy.
WHAT IS X?

Alumni Experience incorporates insight, principles, and methods
of usability studies, alumni engagement and other disciplines. In
short, Alumni experience [AX] covers all the aspects of how
people view the university, how well they know about the courses
offered, who the notable alumnus are, how the university
contributes to the public and the quality of education and
research it products.
ALUMNI EXPERIENCE

AX
Courses
Offered
Brand
Connections Events
Notable
Alumni
Research
Publication
/ Rankings

Good experiences retain Alumni
Great experiences bring in “lost” Alumni
Bad experiences push Alumni away
Terrible experiences will cause loss of many connections
X

Many organizations go down the path of technology or tech-
focused design. It is easy to be fixated on tech and relate it to
innovation when you talk about experience, but this is a trap
called – Mediumism.
QR codes send people to website which is not mobile friendly.
FB pages that broadcast the same marketing on all platforms.
Mobile apps which provide no utility or entertainment value.
Event which does nothing more than provide free food and
drinks.
MEDIUM

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY FLICKR

UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
YOUTUBE

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

STANFORD

HARVARD
https://foursquare.com/universities

MIT

SUNWAY U

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

It is not:
A campaign
A click path
A mobile app
A feature set
A tagline
Packaging
Same events that recur every
year
It is not:
Free food
Free drinks
Free movies
Provocative news, colors or design
A good webpage
Anything other than implicit or
explicit design, conveyance,
reinforcement, and shaping of
meaningful and sharable experiences
– ALL THE TIME
GOOD EXPERIENCE

COCA COLA

A user centric perspective on what’s next for the company –
focusing on experiences that bring the brand to life in culturally
cognizant yet personal ways.
This is part of Coca Cola’s message of inspiring moments of
optimism and happiness.
Coke looks at what the cultural role the brand play rather than
“What’s the communication message that Coke can deliver”
This is the heart of experience architecture that both competes
for the moment and paves the way for the future.
MESSAGE

Changing the organization to create experiences starts
with defining what the experience is and should be.
To create meaningful experiences, you need empathy.
“The most obvious important realities are often the ones
that are hardest to see and talk about.”
-- David Foster Wallace (Kenyan College 2005)
EMPATHY

Everything is different now. Younger Alumni living a digital
egosystem, have become the center of their digital lives. They
share more information online and they receive more feedback
than analog alumni before them.
They are connected, always on, multitasking, living multiple
screens. Their nature is social and mobile and they share their
world on these networks their way. Can you design an experience
for them?
Future is converging, even the older Alumni is using consuming
social media.
DIGITAL DIFFERENCE

INNOVATION
Innovation does not mean only IT solutions
Unnecessary tech is simply a waste of money
Innovation starts from within, corporate culture needs
to support innovation.
Innovation comes in big and small, there is change to
small.
When you innovate, change will happen, change needs
to be managed.

BARRIERS TO
INNOVATION
FEAR
1) Fear of failing and uncertainty.
When it has not be done before, there is much fear that it will not
succeed, and often cause organizational paralysis
2) Fear of looking stupid.
Many executives don’t like to learn new skills, egos are at stake
and they don’t want to look like amateurs.

BARRIERS TO
INNOVATION
EXPERIENCE
3) Knowledge can be a crutch.
Knowing too much of a subject may cause executives not to take in
new ideas and reject facts contrary to their experience.
4) Outdated knowledge.
Many executives graduated years ago and their idea of
technology is often outdated and they do not take the time
to learn new skills.

YOUR
ORGANIZATION
Your employees need to know your tagline and mission
statement. Executive should demonstrate it, and it
should be part of corporate culture.
Motivation is key for innovation, employees need to feel
ownership and they are empowered to make a difference

DON’T CHASE
PERFECTION
Creating something revolutionary is never perfect.
Don’t wait, there is no perfect time to try and launch.
Don’t worry about working on a new process or
product.
Remember, the first laser printer is crap, but it is a
revolutionary crap.

HATERS WILL HATE
There will always be people that will hate any sort of
change, whether it is good or bad.
All products and services will polarize people.
Remember, there will also be a subset of people that will
love the product.

COMMUNICATE
WELL
For every innovation, you need to sell it. The leader
needs to share the thoughts behind the innovation and
communicate the benefits and values.
Tailor presentation to audience.

THINK BEYOND NORMS
SPARK INNOVATION
Use design thinking?
Combining mundane methods together may create a
new solution.
In a share economy, don’t think of innovating alone.

INNOVATION IS TIED TO
EMPATHY
Empathy is the foundation to Design thinking as well
Lived experience of the end user (or beneficiary) is key.

Empathy Fail

Empathy
Fail

EMPATHY
What is Empathy?
Empathizing means getting out of the office and
interacting with beneficiaries or end users, living in their
shoes, before you design the programs, and throughout
the process to make sure you are on the right track.

TOOLS OF EMPATHY
Interviews
Observation / immersion
You are not looking for what they think they want – you are
looking for what they need, based on what they do
Engaging in the program as an end user
Free yourself from expectations and assumptions.
Do careful recordings.

1. Actionable
2. Sharable
3. Meaningful
4. Creative
5. Memorable
6. Functional
7. Game-changing
EXPERIENCES TO
CREATE

When companies think about customer acquisition vs
customer retention, universities and alumni relations
department has a much more important job.
Alumni are part of the branding, customer, advocate,
donor, etc.
With a good experience architecture, alumni will talk and
alumni will listen.
THE ALUMNI

IGNORANCE + ARROGANCE = IRRELEVANCE
Truth can be a painful surprise.
It is important that we not come to be on the defensive
in reacting to share experiences.
PERCEPTION =
REALITY

How do we have micro experiences converging with
shared experiences?
X marks the spot where the experience you define and
the result of congrous micro-experiences that
collaborate to form a meaningful and relatable brand as
defined by those who experience and contribute to it.
ALUMNUS JOURNEY
Micro Experiences Shared Experiences

How to effectively connected the dots between micro-
moments, helping to move Alumni forward and also
have them contribute back to the experience you design
for the next person to discover.
One good way is for Alumni to engage back to the
Faculty, sharing experiences in classes.
ALUMNUS JOURNEY

American universities focus about Alumni engagement
in classes. Alumni can relive their experience while
sharing their working experience, they can also be
inspired by the energy, insight and emotions. Its
emotional, its personal and along the way, the students
will feel that it is common to “give back” and support
their future students, for branding of their own
university and Alumni.
ALUMNUS JOURNEY

Alumni sharing experience with other Alumni is a good
start. Micro-experience and shared experiences at the
core of the new journey, everything comes together.
When you design and facilitate desired experiences,
nurture the experiences people have and share, enhance
touch-points to guide alumni throught their journey
(messaging, sense making, technology, personalization),
you have designed by intention.
ALUMNUS JOURNEY

An experience architect, not just a brand architech, is
needed – someone to think methodically throught what
the experience is in every step and how the steps should
work together to create “The experience”
The tech team and all Alumni-focused strategists then
come and collaborate to bring the experience to life.
Manage it, Scale it.
You are now an experince architect
ALUMNUS JOURNEY

ALUMNI
Alumni Students
Faculty
University
BRAND

• Increased Global Competition
• Alumni fragmentation & complexity
• Alumni defection
• Silo-ed data (Faculty)
• Outdated Data
• Outdated operational processes
• Organizational barriers
• Privacy / Communications concerns
CHALLENGES

• What do Alumni actually value? (as opposed to what
you think they value)
• How do Alumni behave online and in the real world?
(vs what you designed for them to do)
• What you think they want to do? (vs what you
designed for them to do)
• The quality of engagement and experience that
happen when you pull Alumni together for form a
community.
THINGS TO CONSIDER

• HCD sees the whole person, not merely thinking of
Alumni or students as users of the university, but
rather the context of living their daily lives.
• By getting to know the Alumni as well-rounded
people who do all sorts of things besides being
“Alumni”, we can identify opportunities to appeal to
them and serve their needs that we would not
otherwise come up with.
HUMAN CENTRIC
DESIGN (HCD)

• Our behaviors are deeply influenced by the norms
and frameworks that surround us and design can be
used to create systems and experiences that work with
an underlying understanding of human behavior and
cause people to fall into entirely new patterns of
behavior.
HUMAN CENTRIC
DESIGN (HCD)

A good experience is not just having the best education
system. It is not nicer infrastructure or free food at
events. It is not about technology or lack thereof.
Its about the people. Engagement is what it is about.
GOOD EXPERIENCE

UX – Alumni attending events, using portals, etc.
BX – Brand experience is the framework for
experiences. How does the University brand affect the
Alumni? How is it perceived by another person? Every
interaction between an intangible brand artifact
contributes to the brand experience.
CX – Perception a Alumni has after graduation. Quality
of education, subconscious experience, much more than
rational experience.
EXPERIENCE

UX + CX + BX = Experience
EXPERIENCE

Capture their intents not just their complaints
EXPERIENCE

EXPERIENCE

EXPERIENCE
2 ways to affect human behavior
1) Manipulate them
2) Inspire them

ECO-SYSTEM
So, do you have an Alumni eco-system?
Can Alumni be leveraged as mentors, guest speakers,
alumni helping alumni groups?
Can Alumni help answer question from the community?
Can Alumni help crowdfund Alumni projects?
How does faculty play a role in Alumni experience?

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