Digital Experience UX Apprenticeship Program

Project: Scaling a Student UX Apprenticeship Program to Improve Digital Experience and Accessibility

Overview
At Northeastern University, I founded and led the Digital Experience student apprenticeship program, designed to both improve high-impact university platforms and offer real-world UX research and design training to a diverse student team. The program became a sustainable, scalable model for combining service design with workforce development.

My Role

  • Program founder and UX/UI Design lead within Information Technology Services.
  • Built a team of 20 student researchers, designers, developers, and supervisors, across undergraduate and graduate levels.
  • Oversaw hiring, training, mentorship, and research design for semester-long UX projects.

The Challenge
The university’s most widely used platforms—student portals, service dashboards, intranets—lacked usability consistency and accessibility compliance. Meanwhile, there was no structured program to harness student talent in solving real UX problems. My goal was to design a program that improved platform usability and institutional UX maturity, while developing early-career professionals.

Process

  1. Program Infrastructure & Hiring Pipeline

    • Structured the team with 3 Lead roles and 17 Assistant roles, organized into smaller sub-teams, each assigned a research project per semester.
    • Developed a rigorous hiring process including application forms, screening activities, video presentations, and interviews—scaling efficiently from 150+ applicants per cycle to 10–15 top candidates.

  2. Training & Onboarding

    • Created a multi-layered onboarding curriculum and competency matrix, supported by LinkedIn Learning tutorials, internal presentations, and team-based knowledge sharing.
    • Provided leads with leadership development and stakeholder management expectations.

  3. UX Research Framework

    • Standardized a repeatable UX research process: stakeholder discovery → surveys → user testing → data synthesis → actionable recommendations.
    • Led projects that applied mixed methods research, including task-based testing, journey mapping, and persona development.

  4. Project Execution & Platform Improvements

    • Directed enhancements on platforms like the Student Service Portal, Canvas, Tech Services Portal, and MentorHub.
    • Delivered high-impact design updates and reports to stakeholders, integrating WCAG-aligned accessibility reviews into every project.

  5. Team Culture & Stakeholder Engagement

    • Conducted weekly leadership meetings and cross-team syncs.
    • Coached student leads in delegation, prioritization, and stakeholder presentation, empowering them to be the face of their project work.

Outcomes

  • Trained and mentored over 20 students across five semesters, many of whom went on to UX roles in industry and academia.
  • Delivered institution-wide usability and accessibility enhancements for digital platforms supporting thousands of users.
  • Built a sustainable model for combining UX service delivery with experiential learning—now institutionalized for future cohorts.
  • Elevated the university’s UX maturity by embedding inclusive design and research practices into long-term ITS workflows.