The landscape of high education is rapidly changing and nowhere is it as volatile as in the graduate programs. For the University of Northwestern we staked out time to develop personas based not only on industry reports, but in-house research to the Northwestern market. 

Online Survey

To reach a substantial number of potential christian graduate students we reached out to three main audiences: Northwestern Alumni, current Northwestern Graduate Students and current Northwestern Funnel Students. Our goal was not to convince them to come to Northwestern, but to understand the point in their life that made them open to the idea of exploring part time graduate school and what their journey looked like navigating universities, websites, and school counselors. From our efforts we were able to gather 800+ completed surveys. The survey included multiple choice, single choice responses and text fields for participants to elaborate on their thoughts.

Results

From the survey results we were able to distill the data down to the most three demographics that were most keen on going back to school to get their master's degree. 

Marketing Personas

To flesh out the personas we included not only measurable data results, but also items and a voice that were implied by their written responses along with other demographic research.

User Flow & The Hero's Journey

The next in our process is identifying user flow and creating the hero's journey for these personas. Stay tuned for more details! We're going to need a lot more Post-its.