USER RESEARCH / PRODUCT THINKING / PROTOTYPING / USABILITY TESTING / DEV Q&A
Product Design Co-op
@ Scoir.Inc
Worked in a team of 4 Product Designers over six months to re-design and re-think the college application process through Scoir.
The application platform is currently used by approximately 1,000,000 applicants in 2023 to apply to more than 1800 colleges across 35 states in the US.
PROJECT INFO
- Worked as a Product Designer
- In a team of 4 Product Designers
- April 2022 to September 2022
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
- Supported Lead Product Designers in Product Thinking, Research, Prototyping, and Dev Quality Assurance
- Created High-Fidelity Prototypes and Micro-Interactions
- Worked with Developers and the Marketing team to turn prototypes into production websites
TOOLS USED
- Figma (Design System)
- Adobe Suite
- Pendo.io
- Jira
🎓Scoir's Mission
To expand college access and improve student outcomes by connecting students, supporters, high schools, and colleges for a better admissions experience. As of 2022 Scoir and Coalition for College combined to provide students with a new platform to apply for colleges by leveraging the benefits of both Scoir and Coalition for College; providing students with a fast, free, and easy way to apply to colleges.
💪Solution
🌠Impact of my contributions
*Estimated Impact. Waiting on updated data from the company.
THE CHALLENGE
MY PROCESS
🔭Research - Creating E2E Usability Test Protocols to De-Risk our approach
A significant part of my work at Scoir consisted of research. I created two Comprehensive Interview Protocols for Usability Tests and one quick End to End User Survey. I also conducted 10+ User Interviews, both to de-risk our assumptions about our target audience and later to test the End-to-end flow of a user through our application platform.
Usability Test Protocol Guides & Results
🎯Design Goals (Already decided by leadership)
⚠️Constraints to our design approach
1) Time Constraint: The time allowed for this development was only 6 months, this included everything from Research, to design, to development.
2) Legacy Platform: This was another limiting factor as we could not create something entirely new. We had to work with Scoir's current design system and dev guidelines to create a fresh and stress-free experience.
3) External Factors: Scoir also had to partner with other platforms such as Slate.org that helped a student make payments before they applied. Including two partners meant transferring applications from one platform to another mid-process which broke cohesion. This was a challenge to a student's approach to understanding the cohesiveness of the application.
4) Scoir's Legacy Users: Scoir works with a large number of high schools and Colleges where most high school students are already registered with Scoir, which gives them the ability to transfer their info from the school database to Scoir's application platform. Regardless, anyone can apply through Scoir: High school students, Homeschooled students, Transfer students, or anyone else! The challenge was to make Cowpath all these different user types into the application and help them successfully apply.
🗺️How do we orient four different user types to this new platform?
Our first challenge after research was to create a proper orientation for Scoir's 4 primary User types who will use Scoir to complete and submit their application to a specific college or colleges.
These 4 User Types and their different Use Cases are as follows:
- App Only Applicant - User Type only interested in using Scoir's application platform to submit an application to a specific college.
- Coalition Referral Applicant - User Type referred by the coalition website to use Scoir's platform to submit applications to colleges that belong to the Coalition for College program (free application using coalition).
- Scoir Linked Applicant (Existing) - User Type that is Scoir's native users interested in using the full functionality of Scoir's platform (Search & Discovery and Application Profile) to submit their application to one or multiple colleges.
- New Registrants on Scoir - User Type that is newly registered Scoir applicants that joined the Scoir platform after the partnership between Scoir and Coalition for college.
- Transfer Students (Sub Category) - User Type that could be a subset of any of the above-defined user types. These users intend to create a transfer application through Scoir.
This was a big challenge because all three user types were at different levels of understanding of what Scoir is, what its functionalities are, and how the partnership between Scoir and Coalition for college works.
To solve this, I worked with another Designer on a User Needs Analysis and Affinity Mapping to scope the goals and motivation of all three user types.
💁Let's start by understanding their needs
🚪🚶Creating an orientation map! - designing entry and information points for users
The User Needs Analysis and Affinity Mapping were then followed by creating an Orientation Map with the current information architecture of Scoir's platform. We mapped out flows for each User Type and marked spots (purple rectangles) where we might provide additional information to each user type for level setting them into Scoir's Platform.
🛣️Creating student paths on mock screens for each user type
We used this data to create a flow for each user with mock screens and where exactly on the screens we can prompt an interaction for proper orientation and level setting.
New Registrants on Scoir
Scoir Linked
Coalition Refferal
Application Only
💍Once they enter, how do we keep them engaged?
Once the orientation for each user was set. I worked on creating rules for engagement and re-engagement for the users. These rules were used to define when would we consider a user as an active user vs. a user who has abandoned the app profile. The rules further enunciated the means of communication (Notifications, Emails) to be used on various points of the user journey to make sure the user stays connected and engaged with the platform and their progress on the platform. The red markers are points in the user journey where we send out communications to engage or re-engage.
FINAL DELIVERABLES
🐃The meat of Scoir's college application profile - Application Forms
A significant part of my work at Scoir was also to use Scoir's Design System and Material Design Guidelines to design the User Interface for Scoir's Application profile. This formed the main chunk of Scoir's new and refreshed application platform. It constituted of forms and input fields where users had to enter all information from Personal Information, Citizenship, Classwork, and Test Scores, up until their College Essay. This task was especially challenging because I had to make sure not to overload the users with large chunks of information at once and to make sure the process of adding information went smoothly and coherently. You can check my work on Scoir's Live website.
Steps:
- Access https://www.scoir.com/
- Login or Sign Up
- Click on Apply with Scoir
- All form fields were worked by me!
🎙️Also recorded a podcast!
During my time at Scoir, I also helped the Podcast team record a podcast on how to apply as an international student to colleges in the US. In this podcast, I shared my experience as an international student applying to colleges in the US.
☄️So.....what was the impact?
🔨Scoir thoroughly solidified my core design skills
Made with <3 by Tushar Rai ©2024