Broken by Design · Interactive Diagnostic
Student Experience
Friction Finder
Is your institution designed around the student journey—or are students carrying the complexity?
Evaluate one student process in approximately three minutes. The Friction Finder translates familiar institutional conditions into the amount of complexity students must navigate.
Find your friction scoreSix questions · Immediate results · No student data required
Choose one process to examine
Where is your institution creating preventable friction?
Use what you know about admissions, financial aid, orientation, advising, registration, transfer, or graduation. There are no trick questions—only a clearer view of the system students encounter.
What your answers reveal
From institutional operations to student experience
The diagnostic does not ask administrators to guess how students feel. It translates observable realities into the likely level of friction built into the process.
Designed for students
The institution carries the complexity and makes the next step visible.
Some friction
The process is usually manageable when students receive clear support.
High friction
Students must compensate for disconnected systems, offices, or information.
System failure
Success depends on persistence or luck.
Aspirations tell us what an institution hopes to be. Observable realities tell us what it has designed itself to do.Dr. Kasandrea Sereno · Broken by Design
The score starts the conversation
Friction is rarely one broken step.
It lives in the loops, gaps, and handoffs between steps—in the places where students become the integration layer connecting offices, technologies, policies, and people.
The goal is not simply to make students more resilient. It is to build systems that do not require extraordinary resilience to navigate.
Broken by Design examines how institutional systems shape student experience—and how colleges can redesign those systems for better outcomes.
Your score identifies the friction
The next step is redesigning the system behind it.
Dr. Kasandrea Sereno helps colleges turn fragmented processes into student-centered systems that improve enrollment, persistence, and trust.