In today’s competitive educational landscape, how can schools create a marketing and admissions experience that truly speaks to prospective students and their families?
It’s a question that cuts to the heart of how School Education Leaders approach raising awareness, consideration and admissions —and one that we at Doodle Design had the privilege to explore deeply with over 80 marketing & admissions professionals, solving challenges for different target segments, in a two-day Design Thinking led workshop.
Our challenge was clear: How might we design an exceptional marketing and admissions experience that effectively persuades our target audience?
With this goal in mind, Doodle Design guided the 80 participants through a Design Thinking journey that took them from uncovering insights to ideating and receiving constructive feedback on actionable ideas.
2-Day Design Thinking Workshop Agenda:
Day 1: Discover & Define
Goal Sharing & Design Thinking Introduction:
We started by defining the objectives and roles in this collaborative process, warming up with activities that introduced the “Why, What & How” of Design Thinking and six key innovator behaviors essential for solving complex challenges.
Once inspired by a Design Thinking led approach, we began by aligning around the power of empathy. Design Thinking encourages us to “solve the right problems, with the right solutions, for the right people.” To lay the groundwork, we focused on understanding and framing the problem(s) from each groups’ specific target audience’s perspective.
Session #1 – Discover
This session was all about diverging—to gain insights by reframing the problem space through the lens of the target personas.
Session #2 – Define
Next, we converged around the most relevant challenges, using insights to clarify the priority needs of our target personas.
By the end of Day 1, each team had created personas, visualizing learnings about their target audiences and identified priority challenge statements, setting the stage for broad, creative ideation in Day 2.
Day 2: Ideate & Iterate
With a clear customer-centric problem definition in hand, the teams embarked on the exciting phase of ideation, moving from potential ideas to tangible ‘early stage ideas’ or ‘prototypes’ rough but ready enough to share with their peers for constructive feedback.
Session #3 – Ideate
This session focused on sparking and exploring a wide range of ideas. Teams engaged in divergent thinking, considering innovative people and organisations for inspiration, generating and prioritizing potential high-value solutions.
Session #4 – Iterate (Make, Test & Learn)
Finally, teams iterated on their ideas, creating quick prototypes to test and refine. This was where concepts moved from abstract to concrete, with each group identifying a path and potential ‘Action Plan’ of iniviatives to move forward.
By the close of Day 2, each team had developed persona-centric ideas and created first idea-prototypes, backed by an action plan for moving forward.
Post-Workshop Coaching Sessions
1 month later, we held follow-up coaching sessions to reinforce learnings and guide teams in refining their solutions and gaining further internal stakeholder and external end-parent & student feedback on the ideas. This check-in allowed each team to receive tailored feedback, enhancing their confidence and clarity as they moved closer to real-world implementation on their Action Plans.
Key outcomes and benefits
By placing people at the heart of the process via Design Thinking, we built a shared understanding between all the participants, across multiple team roles and countries. We empowered the School Education Leaders to with ‘repeatable ways’ to start using Design Thinking to build authentic, persuasive admissions communications & experiences that resonate to drive enrolments with their communities’. Key outcomes included:
- Deep Customer Empathy: Participants were equipped with ways to gain a deeper understanding of their target audience through persona development, ensuring that their strategies/ideas truly aligned with the needs and motivations of prospective students and families.
- Actionable Solutions Aligned with Real Needs: By focusing on the “right problems” for the “right people,” participants generated high-impact ideas tailored to address the specific needs of their audience, leading to targeted, relevant marketing and admissions initiatives and communications.
- Collaborative Innovation Across Roles and Countries: The workshop fostered a collaborative environment where diverse perspectives could converge, allowing teams from multiple roles and regions to develop a shared understanding and aligned approaches. Everything learned could be ‘repeated and reused’ following the Design Thinking Templates and steps shared.
- Hands-On Prototyping and Iteration: By transforming abstract concepts into initial prototypes, participants could immediately shape and gain feedback to refine their ideas, boosting their confidence and directions to immediately apply to their work post-workshop.
- Action Plans: Each team left with a tangible action plan of ideas to take further and test, empowering them to turn insights into effective initiatives that can be implemented and measured for impact.
- Follow-Up Support for Ongoing Learning: The post-workshop coaching session reinforced participants’ learning, provided additional guidance, Design Thinking templates/tools and helped teams gather further feedback from key stakeholders (and parents & students alike), leading to greater clarity and alignment on right-fit implementation.
Interested to Transform Marketing and Admissions Through Design Thinking at your School?
Please contact us to explore how Design Thinking can equip your school teams to connect more deeply with your community to drive enrolment at hello@doodledesign.co
