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Mrs. College Guide
Web application for students applying to university
Paving the Path to University Success
Mrs. College Guide is a student-friendly platform designed to simplify the university application process for students applying to multiple universities. It provides a streamlined and intuitive experience, saving time and reducing the complexity often associated with college applications.
About
This was a group project for round 3 of Lighthall's Product Design Challenge.
Deliverables
UX/UI Design :
- User Research
- User Flows
- Usability Testing
- High-fidelity Screens and Mock-ups
Team Members
- Brian Louie
- James Reyes
- Tania Zolotukhina
- Jinny Lee
Unveiling the Student Perspective.
Problem Diagnosis
Every year, hundreds of thousands of high school students apply to US universities to get into undergraduate programs. This is an incredibly stressful and time-consuming process, so we want to make their lives easier.
Proposed Solutions
Mrs. College Guide can provide students with an efficient platform for managing their university applications, saving them time, reducing complexity, and increasing their chances of successful admissions.
Exploring User Insights
To begin the user research phase of this project, we opted to distribute questionnaires to a large number of students. This allowed us to focus on understanding their pain points, preferences, and expectations regarding the university application process. By gathering these responses, we were able to collect quantitative and qualitative data that provide valuable insights that shape the development of the app.
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Insights from the pain points and difficulties section of the questionnaire significantly impacted the design for the application. The design can address time management challenges by providing deadline reminders and time-saving shortcuts. A centralized dashboard can track application progress and send notifications. These insights inform a user-centric design that simplifies the application process and increases the chances of successful applications to multiple universities.
- 72% of respondents indicate that managing multiple university applications simultaneously is a challenge, especially when keeping track of deadlines and required documents.
- 82% of respondents express frustration with the time-consuming nature of the process, stating that it hinders their ability to focus on other academic and personal commitments.
- 73% of participants express difficulties in keeping track of the status of their applications, leading to anxiety and uncertainty about their progress.
- 48% of participants report frustration with the lack of a centralized system or tool to monitor and organize their submitted applications, resulting in potential missed opportunities or incomplete submissions.
- Respondents express higher satisfaction levels when receiving timely notifications and updates on their application status, highlighting the importance of transparent communication.
- What difficulties did you encounter while managing multiple university applications simultaneously?
- What were the biggest challenges you faced when applying to multiple universities?
- What aspects of the application process do you find most challenging?
- How do you currently search for universities that you want to apply to?
- Do you face difficulties with managing multiple applications simultaneously? If yes, please explain.
- On a scale of 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with your previous experiences applying to multiple universities?
- What aspects of the university application process do you find most frustrating or difficult?
- What features or functionalities do you think are lacking in current university application tools?
We opted to conduct online surveys using Google Forms, so we could reach a large group of students. We aimed to recruit college students who recently went through the application process to understand their thoughts when they applied to university. Participants were provided a link to the survey, which they can access and complete at their convenience. When designing the questions, we made sure they were clear, unbiased, and covered the research objective, which was to understand the students needs and gather user preferences.
Navigating the Application Journey
Based on my findings, we were able to create a student persona, Emily, and map out her university application journey. This student journey map helped us understand what students go through when applying to multiple universities.
The results from the student journey map, research, and surveys, were used to make informed decisions, prioritize features, and ensure that the design of Mrs. College Guide aligns with student expectations. The biggest pain points we discovered was that students had difficulty in managing multiple applications simultaneously as well as, most students felt uncertainty after submitting applications.
The Making of Mrs. College Guide
From here, we used the insights gained from our research to develop a site map which depicts the key functionalities that the high fidelity screens would focus on. This site map also aided in our collaboration as everyone had a shared understanding of the application's structure and functionalities. This framework, along with our research insights would guide our designs moving forward.
Early Wireframes
Since this was a timely design challenge, we jumped straight into greyscale medium fidelity wireframes. The team would meet up every night and share design possibilities and work towards making our designs more cohesive.
Retrospective
What Went Well
Working on Mrs. College Guide was an exciting journey as it was my first design challenge where I had to work with a team. There is still much more to be explored with this app, but let's reflect on the successes, challenges and key takeaways from this project.
I was thankful to work with a collaborative and helpful team for this project. Each team member came from different experience levels, but we all treated each other as equals and developed a supportive team culture. This allowed me to learn a lot from my team as we encouraged and valued each others feedback for the designs.
Challenges
As this project was part of a design challenge, I believe the biggest challenge was lack of time. We only had a week to work on the designs for this project, so it was difficult for us iterate our final designs based on more user tests.
Key takeaways
My key takeaway from this project was that strong communication and collaboration is key when working with a team to deliver quality designs. Our collaborative team and dedication to a user-centric design will carry on with us in future endeavors. We successfully passed this round of the design challenge and I was grateful for such a valuable experience.