Piloting university-wide customer journeys to improve graduate outcomes

As part of RMIT’s 2020 strategy to improve graduate outcomes, I led a pilot program to design and test university-wide customer journeys for Industry and Global placements. The work aimed to create a scalable, sustainable service model that better supported students, industry partners, and staff.

Using a human-centred service design approach, I led two design squads to deliver end-to-end experiences across multiple customer segments and disciplines, establishing a shared framework for future rollout across the university.

Role

Strategic Design Lead

Organisation

RMIT

Location

Melbourne

Focus

Service design, customer journeys, operating model, education services

“This work gave RMIT a strategic blueprint for scaling placements, aligning disciplines, driving clarity, and delivering value across students, staff, and partners.

–Project reflection journal

The challenge

Industry and Global placements sit at the core of RMIT’s value proposition, yet experiences varied significantly across disciplines, teams, and touch points. This fragmentation made it difficult to scale placements consistently or identify where operational improvements would have the greatest impact.

As the pilot for RMIT’s customer journeys program, the challenge was to:

Understand student, partner, and staff needs across diverse contexts

Reveal operational silos and hand-offs affecting experience quality

Test whether a unified service model could work across disciplines

Create a repeatable approach that could scale university-wide

“Service design gave us the tools to connect the dots, break down silos, and build a model that could truly scale and give us clarity.

–Stakeholder feedback

My role & responsibilities

As Service Design Lead, I:

Led two design squads delivering the pilot customer journeys program

Set up and guided the service design approach from discovery to delivery

Aligned senior stakeholders and cross-discipline teams around shared goals

Facilitated workshops and research across five academic disciplines

Translated insights into service blueprints, prioritisation frameworks, and roadmaps

Supported the organisation to prepare for implementation and change

–Team war room

Approach & thinking

The work was grounded in a human-centred, systems-level service design approach, balancing depth of insight with the need to move at pace.

Key elements included:

Lean research combining existing data with targeted qualitative and quantitative methods

Workshops and interviews with students, staff, and industry partners across five disciplines

Current-state service blueprints to surface pain points, dependencies, and silos

Competitor and best-practice analysis to inform design rationale

Ongoing stakeholder engagement through weekly share-backs and working sessions

Rather than forcing uniformity, the focus was on identifying where standardisation added value, and where flexibility was needed.

How might we increase the number of students undertaking a global experience?

Outcomes & impact

The pilot delivered a clear foundation for scaling customer journeys across the university:

Created shared visibility of end-to-end student and partner experiences across disciplines

Identified high-impact opportunities to improve placement experiences and operational efficiency

Designed future-state service blueprints and experience frameworks aligned to strategic goals

Enabled prioritisation of initiatives through a structured matrix and phased roadmap

Supported change readiness through impact assessments and a communication strategy

Aligned related projects within a broader, coherent service design framework

The work demonstrated the value of service design as a unifying mechanism for complex, multi-stakeholder environments.

“Lucy brought clarity and structure to a complex challenge. Her ability to align diverse stakeholders, lead with empathy, and translate insights into action made this project a success from day one.

–Team feedback