A Better Student Application
Improving the online student application experience for working adults
Project Details
Web App
The Challenge
Create an enjoyable application process while balancing the needs of the business (security, HIPAA privacy, & payments), the user experience (form usability, feedback loops, & improved user interface), and the requirements of the University partners (qualitative review, invoicing, & customization).
One of the major pain points of pursuing an education or going back to school for students is the process of applying. Even though the majority of schools and universities use some type of online application process, these forms continue to perpetuate out-dated UI, burdensome functionality, and poor user experience.
My Role
As the lead designer on this project, I was tasked with driving a design process that included research, facilitating discovery workshops with leadership, validating designs, and running testing. I worked closely with the engineering team throughout the process to verify existing services and scalability of the solution.
Business KPI & Metrics
Application completion rate
Applicant conversion rate
Decrease time to complete application
The Client
Mapping the Problem
Where, oh where, to begin.
There is no better place to begin a project than with the user. By better understanding the person who will actually use these products (as opposed to relying on assumptions and biases), we can better design our products. Empathizing with our user included conducting a full content analysis across our eight different application types, creating a student emotion map, conducting in-person & remote user interviews, and doing a deep dive into our data analytics.
Initial designs were discussed and thought through via paper sketches, whiteboarding sessions with the engineering team, and prototypes built in Keynote & Invision for rapid testing.
Student Emotional Journey Map
Let there be data.
A critical element of this redesign was to study and analyze all our available data channels. We chose to use a combination of Google Analytics, heatmaps, scrollmaps, and funnel conversions in order to create a full picture of our existing user behavior and habits. We then used this information to lead our overall design direction.
Exploring the Iterations
Key Insights
After collecting the data and presenting the findings to the leadership and engineering teams, it was time to test our ideas on one of the applications to use for testing purposes.
Friendlier copy was added to build trust, celebratory moments were created throughout to accommodate longer applications, and a more approachable user interface was added.
User Flow & Task Analysis
One of our biggest challenges was to create an architecturally uniform, yet flexible, application that served our many university programs. Working closely with our Visual Designer, Front End Developers, and Back End Developers, we were able to accommodate these requirements and improve the user’s experience – which we verified through testing.
Outcomes
Insight is 20/20.
During the development of this project, more robust analytics tools became available for deeper insights into user details and behavior. An assumption that was made early in the process was that students filled out the applications on a computer. After partnering with Chipotle as Guild’s first major corporate partner, it was abundantly clear that students preferred their phones. (See usage chart below)
This was later verified by 1:1 user interviews I conducted with students who preferred to initiate the application process on their phones. I brought these findings to leadership and convinced the team to prioritize a fully mobile application experience as well.
