Problem
NYU has a huge number of active clubs and organizations, and every semester a new wave of students shows up wanting to join them.
However, branch administrators had no way to bulk add or remove members themselves. To get a large group into an organization, they had to go through a super administrator for an involvement import, which meant preparing a .csv in a very specific format. Formatting was time-consuming, and each import maxed out at 1,000 users. Admins were doing this every semester, on top of the rest of their jobs.
So our goal was simple:
Give that power back to the branch administrators and let them manage their rosters directly.
Starting With the People
Before designing anything, I interviewed branch administrators and student leaders from a range of NYU organizations I wanted to hear how they actually handled rosters today, where it hurt, and what they wished they could do instead. Those conversations became a persona.
The research gave us plenty to work with, and as a team, we turned the pain points into a feature list. We chose to focus on branch administrators. They were the ones importing large lists every semester, and they had the most to gain from a better way.
Discovery
Mapping the Journey
With the feature set in hand, I mapped a user flow covering the full journey of managing a roster, from signing in to confirming the upload. Seeing it end-to-end helped the team agree on what the experience needed to include and where it could stay lean.
Letting Users Decide the Order
The heart of the tool is the Manage Roster form. It needed to capture the organization, the action (add or remove), the start or end date, and the member information. Each of those was clearly necessary, but it wasn’t obvious what order would feel natural, so I ran a card sorting exercise with our users rather than guessing.
The results shaped the form. Every section needed for an import is there, in the order our users expected to move through them.
Landing Page
Getting in is simple. Users head to the portal and sign in with the NYU login they already have, so there’s no new account to set up or password to remember.
Manage Roster
Once signed in, users land on the Manage Roster tab. This is where the work happens: one form to add or remove students from a club roster, replacing the .csv-and-super-admin routine.
Step 1 - Add or remove users from a roster
Step 2 - Select an organizational branch
Step 3 - Select an organization
Step 4 - Select a start date
Step 5 - Input users
Step 6 - Submit
Step 7 - Review roster changes
Step 8 - Process roster changes
Task History
Admins also need to know what happened after they hit submit. The Task History tab shows a table of every roster they’ve managed, including the organization, the number of users, and the status of the upload. Each upload has a download button, available for 30 days, that returns a .csv of the users and flags any that didn’t upload successfully.
Error Handling
Bulk imports go wrong in plenty of ways, so I designed a distinct error status for each failure case along the way. The goal was for an admin to always know what happened and what to do about it.
Step 1 - Add or remove users from a roster
Step 2 - Select an organizational branch
Step 3 - Select an organization
Step 4 - Select a start date
Responsive Design
The blobby shapes that gave the UI its personality were also the hardest part to make responsive. Working closely with our front-end developer, we defined breakpoints around popular screen sizes and resized the organic elements to fit each one.
Conclusion
NYU Engage Membership Manager launched in the summer of 2021. Our user base was small, so usability testing at this stage was quicker and more casual than a typical formal round.
Key takeaways:
Response Design
Responsiveness wasn’t a top priority at the start, but it made a big difference once we put the work in. I learned how breakpoints work, how to scale a layout well, and, from the developers, how much effort goes into making it feel smooth.
User Testing
We worked directly with our users to build the persona and understand their habits and frustrations, then brought in a mix of students and staff for testing, which gave us broader feedback to inform our design decisions.