Presidential Commission for Financial Aid

The college has seen an increase in the number of students on financial aid since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing students with adequate aid is critical to making college access equitable and creating a more socioeconomically diverse community.

The Presidential Commission on Financial Aid (PCFA) partnered with the DALI Lab to create an interactive storytelling website to educate users about the importance of financial aid and encourage users to donate to the Dartmouth College Fund. This website centers around the story of one student to illustrate how contributions from donors would transform his Dartmouth experience.

I joined the PCFA team in Spring 2022, after hi-fis and a MVP had been developed by students who previously worked on the team. My team ideated solutions to address these narrative inconsistencies and design visuals to captivate users and help them empathize with students who rely on aid.

The main pieces of constructive feedback they provided can be distilled into two categories:

We aimed to give parts 2 and 3 a more positive tone, so that the story ends on a better note.

In total, nearly a dozen screens were dedicated to depicting Tim's challenges in juggling multiple jobs and coursework. While showcasing this adversity remains central to the website's purpose, there were too many screens focusing on the same problem. We removed a couple screens to cut down on repetition and make the story less sad.

This addition gives users a window into Tim's life, helping them better understand his financial situation. In this fictional narrative, both of his parents work full time jobs and take up extra shifts to pay for his college. Despite their best efforts, it isn't enough to cover the cost of Tim's education.

In the initial prototype, Tim juggles multiple jobs to financially support himself and cover tuition expenses. However, the strain of balancing these commitments alongside his academics becomes overwhelming, leading him to give up his favorite extracurricular activity: the Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC).

However, our client found that having Tim leave the DOC didn't effectively convey our story's message. Our goal was to communicate that the time and emotional burden experienced by students on financial aid is substantial enough to significantly transform their Dartmouth experience. Thus, we changed the storyline so that instead, Tim drops pre-med and his dreams of becoming a doctor because of his financial constraints. Here is how we implemented this change:

To connect with alumni from a wide variety of backgrounds, we created a section of the story called "The Dartmouth Experience" to showcase the array of opportunities accessible to students. We spent hours combing through Dartmouth's photo archives to find a diverse assortment of images.

We asked our usability testers to select their favorite two images.

This addition helps us achieve our second goal: better integrate Dartmouth's sense of community into this story. Despite users' different backgrounds, this introduction will help them find a sense of belonging through shared experiences. As the user scrolls, the photos and text slowly fade onto the screen.

Before I joined this project, a thorough design system was developed by previous team members, and my role was to look for small ways to polish this system.  

To align with the school-related theme of the website, we introduced a white, paper-textured background to the text. While small, this addition made the text easier to read and gave the screen a more playful look.

We incorporated a similar rectangular background to other screens to emphasize important text and create a similar look across the website.

We implemented this across multiple sections of the storyline to make the content more digestible. Here is an example:

You can also view the final product here, complete with animations.