Making mentorship & coaching for college admissions accessible for International Students
UX Research | UX Design | Web+Mobile UI Design | User Testing
Project Details 
My Role
Lead UX Designer
UX Researcher
Duration
Mar '20 - Oct '20
Professional Project
HCIIN, Kathmandu
Team
Nisha Jain
Shandhra Ramana
Danya Elgebaly
Ardensa Cartajona
Sweta Putreddi
Supervisor: Bikalpa Neupane
Tools Used
Figma
Miro
InVision
Adobe CC
Design Question 💬
How might we help students connect with advisers from both industry and school through an online platform?
The Problem Space 
As more and more students from Asian countries move towards the West and other countries to get higher educational degrees, more educational consultancies have formed. However, most of these educational consultancies are very expensive for students coming from middle-class backgrounds. Most of these agents do not know of the scenario on-site where the student wants to go for their studies. Therefore, to bridge this gap between geographic boundaries and minimize the expenses we need an online platform that connect students with professional advisers both from industry and schools.
This is where we chime in! 
Goal
The primary goal of this project was to design a responsive website that makes mentor-ship more widely accessible, irrespective of socioeconomic conditions or geographic boundaries, and provides a platform to coach international students through their college admission process.
UX Research Plan
As a group, we fleshed out our UX research plan, which included Competitive Analysis, Background research, User Surveys & User Interviews
Competitive Analysis 
I collected data along with a team of researchers from several competitor companies and compared them against each other to understand the gap in the market. This gave us an insight into their features, functions, flow, and feelings evoked by their product.
Survey based on existing data 📊
To gather more information at the early stages, I conducted online and in-person surveys of students in China, Nepal, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and India. The sample size taken was 200 students who want to go to the USA for education.
We also looked at the data provided by WES on the usage of agents and advisers around the globe.
70%
Used Independent Education Agents
16%
Used institution sponsored agents
45%
Paid USD 500 or less for agent's services
35%
Paid between USD 501-5000 for agent's services
User Interviews 
At the discovery phase of this project, we conducted 50+ user interviews in order to get a better understanding of the problem mentees and advisers face. We then asked mentees questions regarding their motivation to study abroad, what are obstacles they face in reaching their goal, their previous experiences with such educational consultancy platforms (whether online or in-person). I framed the questionnaire for the interviews.
I chose this method to validate and expand on patterns identified from our survey. I then used affinity mapping to categorize the insights, and identify patterns to design personas for understanding the intended user’s goals, needs, pain points, and motivations.
These are the few questions I asked aspiring international students:
- Why do you need help in your college admission process? What are the areas where you need help the most?
- Do you have any previous experience with advisers? If yes, what were your positive and negative experiences?
These are the few questions I asked to peer advisers and professional educational advisers:
- Why do you want to help students in their college admission process?
- What are the specific areas where you think you can help the most?
- Did you receive any help/guidance while you were going through the college application process? If yes, what were the areas you got help with, and mention some frustrations you faced along the way?
Interview Insights 
"The agent had ties with various universities, and they insisted I apply to only those universities" - Undergraduate Student, Nepal
"It was too expensive, and I ended up doing everything on my own" - Graduate Student, India
"They helped me save a lot of time. However, I could have applied for a Ph.D program, but they advised me to apply for masters programs only. I think they were chasing a higher admissions rate."
Personas 
Based on the interviews I set up three personas depending on the variable needs of the users, i.e., students looking for guidance for their undergrad, grad, or post-grad studies. We referred to them throughout the product development process; it helped me incorporate features that applied to each kind of user on the platform.
a
Customer Journey Maps
After creating the personas, I then mapped out their individual journey experiences across the various touch points and several scenarios on the product. I made a note of their interactions, identified gaps and pain points in the said scenarios. This helped me cover these gaps to create a much more seamless and enjoyable experience for the users.
Ideation ✏️
In order to get a general understanding of how users will interact with the product daily, I created a storyboard. Sketching out few scenarios gave me an opportunity to visualize the interaction between the user and the product in real life.
Site Mapping
Before designing the pages I outlined the primary and secondary pages as a site map to get a better understanding of their levels of priority and how they are linked with each other.
User Flows
I mapped out the steps for both mentees and advisers to see how I could simplify their journey to help them reach their most important goals on the website. I did this to observe how users interact with the product at each given step.
User Flow - Mentee
User Flow- Advisor
Lo-Fi Prototype
I started sketching out paper wireframes to include basic content and static visuals to get an understanding of the overall website. It helped me map out the shell of the interface while placing the basic information on the screen. I sketched out the most important pages of the website for this process.
Design System
To maintain consistency in terms of colors, typography, and icons, I crafted a UI Kit that would inform the Design System for this project.
Hi-Fi Prototype
Further, in the design stage, I created an interactive prototype using Figma. This prototype allowed me and the users to get an overall feel and work of the project without having to code it. It also allowed me to gather inputs from various users regarding the usability and accessibility of the product which gave me opportunities to fix the problems in many rounds of iterations.
Design evolution based on user inputs
Here is a video compiled of the various design iterations I collected as the project went through from the initial stages to the current stage. The inputs from user testing triggered the changes in these designs.
Impact 🎯
- We managed to help 6 students receive admission offers from their choice of universities in the USA and Canada.
- The website traffic showed a promising 12.14% increase after the improved usability and information architecture.
- My work on the project was well received and applauded by the users and other stakeholders involved.
My Learnings 📝
Different research methods: This project involved different research methodologies, namely surveys, interviews, and competitive analysis which helped us gather a lot of quantitative as well as qualitative findings. This helped us make informed design decisions with much more confidence.
Going back to insights: We often referred to the insights we collected from user interviews and the personas we crafted. When we had opposing ideas as a team, the quotes from users and their goals helped us move in the right direction.
Communication is the key: As a team of 5 designers, that were all in different parts of the world, we attempted to communicate all our problems with the team. We communicated over regular Zoom team meetings, slack channels and design & research workshops we conducted as a team.
Future Directions
I was pretty excited about this project as it introduced me to a whole new world of possibilities that is User Experience in technology and education. I had some inhibitions at first but working on this project and having led a team made me confident that I could use my design skills in technology too.
This is not the end of the project just yet, there are a series of user testing that needs to be done and further iterate these designs according to the feedback I receive. I would be constantly updating this case study. I hope you had a blast reading about it as much as I had working on it!
You can visit the live website here! 