2021–2023
Stanford AXESS: the student portal redesigned with the students who use it, and built to be accessible
AXESS is where Stanford students enroll in classes, check their bills and financial aid, and where faculty and staff reach their own services. We redesigned it with students, teaching assistants and the university offices behind it in 2021–2022, and built it on Liferay with an accessible theme; it went live in August 2022, and its enrollment and calendar components were then remediated to WCAG 2.0 AA.
- AA
- WCAG 2.0 for Simple Enroll and My Calendar, validated through testing (2022–2023)
- Aug 2022
- new AXESS live, after research with students and four university offices
Schematic — client UI under NDA
- Client
- Stanford University
- Industry
- Higher Education
- Scope
- UX research · Information architecture · Design system · Liferay implementation · Accessibility remediation
- Platform
- Liferay DXP + PeopleSoft
- Partnership
- 2021–2023
Challenge
In one of our first sessions with graduate students, one told us he could not find how to pay his bill in AXESS: his advisor had to walk him through it, screenshot by screenshot. Another said she only opens AXESS two or three times a quarter, so what she wanted on the first screen was a summary of what she owes. An undergraduate told us that in Simple Enroll, students just want to enroll as fast as they can.
Stanford had asked for an experienced partner to rethink AXESS, its portal for students, faculty and staff on Liferay DXP. Its information architecture was complex, common tasks hard to follow and its content hard to author, and some people use it in more than one role, as a student who is also a teaching assistant or an employee.
Approach
Designed with students and the offices behind AXESS
From late 2021 to early 2022 we tested our prototype with undergraduate and graduate students, including international students, and with teaching assistants, and reviewed it screen by screen with Student Services, Financial Aid, Financial Services and HR and Payroll.
A home for each role
We designed a new information architecture around what each person comes to do: a welcome page for each affiliation, holds and to-dos that stand out, a finances page that puts important dates first, and a way to switch between being a student and being a teaching assistant.
A design system in Stanford’s own language
Using the patterns of our Portal Blueprint, we built a design system on Stanford’s Decanter style guide and Liferay’s Lexicon, delivered as a Figma prototype and ZeroHeight documentation for the templates behind enrollment, academics, finances, personal information and notifications.
Built to be accessible
In 2022 we implemented the design on Liferay 7.2: an accessible, responsive theme, custom components and role-based dashboards connected to Stanford’s PeopleSoft applications. In July 2022 Stanford extended the work to Simple Enroll, its enrollment tool, and My Calendar: from August 2022 to January 2023 we updated the prototypes, remediated the front-end components to WCAG 2.0 AA and validated them through accessibility testing.
Impact
In the last round of sessions, in January 2022, students told us they could see everything they currently use in one place, and had a hard time thinking of what else to improve. The new AXESS went live in August 2022 on an accessible theme, and by January 2023 Simple Enroll and My Calendar had been remediated to WCAG 2.0 AA and validated through testing.
We designed AXESS with Stanford in 2021–2022, built its theme and components with Stanford’s team in 2022, and completed the enrollment and calendar accessibility work in early 2023. The same implementation gives other university units a base for their own channels.
