Meeting the demand for online learning
UAL, known for its world-class programs in art, design, and fashion, has primarily offered on-campus courses. However, the increasing demand for flexible, remote learning has prompted UAL to launch its first online postgraduate courses by September 2025. This ambitious project marks a pivotal step in the university’s digital evolution.
Understanding the digital needs of tomorrow’s students
UAL sought to develop an MVS that would define the scope of their new online student support services. Our challenge was to identify the specific needs of online learners while aligning the technical factors and organisational needs within UAL’s digital ecosystem. The goal? To build user-centred, scalable, and accessible services that enable online students to thrive on their programmes.
Over the course of eight weeks, we embarked on an immersive, collaborative journey with UAL’s Digital & Technology Student Support Services. Our approach was built on the foundation of partnership, co-creation, and an agile mindset, ensuring every decision was shaped by the needs of UAL’s future online students, as well as the technical constraints and opportunities within UAL’s digital infrastructure.
From day one, we made sure that this was not just a project delivered to UAL, but rather, one created with UAL by placing students, staff, and stakeholders at the heart of the design process.
Here’s how we worked:
We facilitated co-design workshops and user research sessions, actively involving UAL teams at every stage. This empowered stakeholders, aligned internal teams, and encouraged cross-departmental collaboration, building UAL's capacity for future user-centred initiatives. UAL staff played an active role, shaping the outcomes alongside us, while also gaining long-term skills and confidence in design methods.
Transparency was crucial. We provided real-time updates and integrated ourselves with the UAL digital team’s existing processes, for example gaining feedback through online Show and Tell sessions. This open working style fostered inclusivity and allowed for early input, helping us quickly adapt to feedback. Working alongside the Student Support Services as a combined project team, we stayed deeply connected, creating a dynamic exchange of ideas that led to a stronger solution.
We adopted an agile, iterative approach that allowed us to test hypotheses and prototypes early in the process. This meant that we didn’t wait until the end to show results; instead, we challenged assumptions with real users and stakeholders throughout the project. Each week brought new insights as we tested our evolving designs with students and staff based on their feedback.
This testing gave us a clearer understanding of the challenges faced by UAL’s prospective online students. It also ensured that the MVS was not built on theoretical assumptions but on real, actionable feedback from users. This agile mindset allowed us to work at pace while ensuring the final MVS was firmly grounded in user needs.
One of the most critical aspects of our approach was following the "furthest first" principle. This meant designing for the users who would face the greatest challenges accessing and using the service, such as students with accessibility and inclusion needs. By considering how the MVS could be accessible to those with greater needs, we aim to improve the experience for all users. Accessibility wasn’t an afterthought; it was a guiding principle from the start.
We successfully delivered a prioritised list of MVS features, providing UAL with a clear roadmap for future development. This list not only outlined immediate next steps but also highlighted opportunities for cross-departmental collaboration to further refine and expand their online student support services.
Through this project, we learned about the distinct needs that online students have compared to their campus based counterparts, for example help with managing their study around busy home and work lives or engaging academic skills after years away from formal education. Simply replicating existing support services would have created a poor online student experience. UAL’s future success lies in embracing new mental models for service delivery, tailored to the specific challenges and opportunities of online education.
The digital environment defines the university experience for online students, therefore building and maintaining confidence in support processes and tools is critical to student success, wellbeing and retention. Awareness and access to support services are key to that process working and relies on concise, timely and accessible communication, to empower students to access relevant information when they need it.
Effectively managed feedback loops could help UAL to build on their understanding of the needs of online students and define and shape the online offer.
“From day one, we fostered a culture of trust and open communication, empowering UAL teams to actively participate in the design process, and despite the short timeline, we delivered a well-researched and validated MVS prioritisation.”
However, we also learned that:
Joining a programme of work: It’s a huge effort to launch a new proposition and there are multiple teams working across UAL to bring it to market. As a small team working at pace, integrating into a programme of work can be hard but working in the open, listening deeply, learning quickly and delivering value early helped us to blend into the work and accelerate the other team’s efforts too.
UAL will continue refining the MVS, using our prioritised list as a tool for future development. This project has laid the groundwork for ongoing iteration, ensuring that UAL Online will meet the needs of future students while remaining at the forefront of digital education.
Our work has helped UAL lay the foundations for something much bigger: a future where flexible, accessible online support services empower students no matter where they are.
Ready to transform your digital student services? Let's collaborate to design solutions that put your users first and drive meaningful results. Get in touch with us today to start your journey.