College Action Program: Helping Students Through College
Creating a space for students to complete difficult tasks and stay motivated to enroll in college.
Project Overview:
Design Challenge:
Our client was College Action Program, a business dedicated to helping students throughout the college process, from application to graduation. However, in the time between getting accepted into college and the first day of college, many students run into challenges. Our client informed our team that 20% of high school students who have been accepted into college do not make it to their first day of class. Our design challenge was to design a mobile app to effectively guide and motivate high school students as they complete the college enrollment process to ensure they attend.
Duration:
3 week sprint
Team:
3 designers
Methods:
User Surveys, User Interviews, Affinity Mapping, Journey Mapping, Persona, User Flow, Wireframes, Mockups, High-Fidelity Prototype
My role:
UX/UI Designer
Tools:
Figma, Otter.ai, Notion
Research: What pain points do students have while enrolling in college?
Research and Synthesis Methods: Heuristics Analysis, User Interviews, User Surveys, Affinity Mapping, Journey Mapping.
Main Insights from 8 User Interviews and Affinity Mapping:
Lack of information on how to complete necessary enrollment steps.
Key Student Quote:
"Registering for financial aid was difficult because there were sections that weren't clear and words I didn't understand."
Guidance and help throughout the college enrollment process was very beneficial for students.
Key Student Quote:
"It would not be as smooth or stress-free without someone to guide me and be a mentor."
Main Insights from 20 Student Survey Responses:
According to our student user surveys, we found that 80% of students believed financial aid was among the top three most difficult steps to complete, while 35% of students believed that tuition payment and payment plan setup was the most difficult.
We also found a trend among users in their deadline management habits. 47.6% of users utilize reminders to manage their deadlines, while 33.3% use a calendar and 19% use an agenda. Our client wanted us to add a progress tracker to our app, so we kept this in mind during our design process.
Main Insights from Journey Mapping:
Through our surveys and journey mapping, we found that difficult tasks throughout the college enrollment process were associated with negative feelings, but receiving words of encouragement was associated with very positive feelings from students.
User Persona: Sidney the Student
While conducting our research, we were able to gain a clear understanding of our target user, and we created a user persona. Meet Sidney!
Bio: Sidney recently received his high school diploma and was accepted into Morehouse College. He wants to enroll, but he does not know where to start.
Goals: Complete all of the necessary steps to enroll in college before the fall semester.
Pain Points: Not knowing what documents are needed, deadlines, and how far along he is in the process.
The Problem: There is a lack of information, as well as guidance and help.
The Problem: There is a lack of information, as well as guidance and help.
Sidney needs guidance and ample information throughout the college enrollment process so that he can have a smooth transition from high school to the first day of college.
The Solution: Provide guidance and ample information.
We believe that if we design a motivational task completion app by applying a visual status of progress, an error prevention system, and accessible resources, then we are likely to see a 10% increase in College Action Program students who attend college, because there are students who do not make it to their first day.
Initial Wireframe:
Our initial wireframe highlights the onboarding process (where students will enter their profile information), followed by a homepage that guides them through each individual step of the process as well as a progress bar at the top of the page highlighting overall completion.
Key Features: How the app will help students.
Taking our research, problem, and solution into account, my team and I designed an app with key features to address each specific insight we found.
Motivational Pop-up
To accomplish our goal of making a motivational task completion app, we included a screen in the onboarding process where users are able to add in their own personal reason for "why" they are going through the college process. Once they have completed this, a pop up banner with their "why" will appear upon entering the dashboard page. These words of encouragement will allow the user to remember why they are completing these difficult tasks, providing them with more motivation to complete each step.
Because users felt a lack of information throughout the enrollment process, we wanted to provide them with ample information for each step.
Within each card (representing a single step), we have included instructional videos, along with written instruction steps that users can get more detail on by clicking the arrow. This will bring them to a page with further information for each sub-step in the process, where they can keep track of their progress or choose to contact a mentor or counselor for guidance.
Ample Information and Steps
Guidance
Once clicking the "Mentor" button within each sub-step, users can choose to contact either their mentor or counselors to schedule a meeting or ask a question. Going back to our user interviews, this is also something that students believed helped them throughout the college enrollment process. Now, students will easily be able to reach out to someone for help while completing each step.
Calendar and Reminders
Going back to our user survey results, 33.3% of students noted that they find using a calendar helpful to stay on track with deadlines, and 47.6% used reminders. By adding a calendar with reminders of upcoming deadlines/events into the app, students are able to keep track of college enrollment deadlines in one place. Adding events to the calendar or agenda will also automatically send students notification
reminders if they agreed to this in the onboarding process.
Agenda
Our user surveys also showed that 19% of students found an agenda helpful to keep track of deadlines. Students benefit from having an agenda in our app as well, where mentor meetings through the app are automatically scheduled, important deadlines or exams are highlighted, and they can add their own events using the orange plus bar on the bottom right.
Chat Bot
We also included a chat bot in the case that students needed a quick answer to a frequently asked question. Students can simply click on the "Albert the Owl" icon on the bottom right of the dashboard. The chat bot can help students complete each task faster, and the mentors and counselors will not be overwhelmed with too many questions from students.
Progress Bar
Our client wanted us to include a visual status of progress throughout our design. This was included in our homepage dashboard, where all of the tasks are listed in cards. We added an overall progress bar in a circular shape at the top of the dashboard, as well a horizontal progress bar within each individual task or "card." Once an individual task is completed, the card will turn orange as an indication of completion.This way, students will be able to keep track of their progress and feel motivated and accomplished as each progress bar moves towards completion.
Iterations based on Usability Testing and User Feedback:
In our usability testing, we found that users did not find our "overall" progress bar clear, because it was a similar style to the progress bar for each step. We made iterations by redesigning a circular overall progress bar in our final design.
During our testing, users also did not find our navigation bar intuitive. One user mentioned that they didn't know if the "Schedule" label meant to "schedule a meeting" or if it would lead to a simple agenda. In our final design, we used icons as imagery to clearly show where users would be lead to in the app. We also incorporated a highlight feature, where the icon associated with the current page opened would turn orange.
Users also mentioned that certain expenses on our initial checklist are not necessary for them, or there are other necessary expenses that aren't listed. In our final design, we allowed for the expenses checklist to be customizable where users could directly type in the name of the expense and add as many as necessary.
Before
After
Before
After
In our initial design, we added CAP Chat, which stands for College Action Program Chat. Users did not know what this meant in our usability testing, so we changed the name of the direct button to Mentor. This way, if a user has a question, they can simply click "Mentor" and be led to directly ask a mentor or college counselor for help.
The Result: Client Satisfaction and User Problems Solved
After presenting our prototype to College Action Program, they were very satisfied with our final design. In the future, my team and I will be working on expanding the app to not only focus on college enrollment, but also college applications and staying on track to graduate.
Our goal with the College Action Program app was to see a 10% increase in College Action Program students who attend their first day of college. Because the app has not launched yet, we are not able to measure this goal at this time. However, in our usability tests, users noted that the app was intuitive and would be a helpful tool to make the college enrollment process easier.
This project was an overall success, and we are excited to continue working with College Action Program.
Next Steps: Continue Testing and Expand
After completing our usability tests with students, our team is considering the following next steps:
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Using an "I" symbol rather than an arrow to lead users into the sub-section steps.
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Allow for sections to be automatically checked as complete after the user has clicked "complete."
Once the app is launched, we will continue usability testing and making iterations to our design. We will also continue working on expanding the app to help students complete the necessary steps to apply for college and to stay on track to graduate college.
Client Recommendation:
"I had the pleasure of working with Andie on a Mobile App Design for College Action Program LLC. I highly recommend Andie to any company looking for a User Experience Designer. Andie did a stunning job developing my EdTech clickable prototype in Figma. I was blown away by the UX/UI research, hypothesis testing and user personas she developed with the larger GA team. Any start up would be lucky to have her on their staff and I would hire her to work for me again in a heartbeat." -Lauren Mills (Owner of College Action Program)
Project Teammate Recommendation:
"It was an honor to work with Andie during our time with GA. During our client project, she has shown facilitating, UX writing, and communication skills. She is an amazing colleague who goes above and beyond within each step of the design process. Please contact me if you would like to learn more about my positive experience with Andie!" - Israel Casas (UX Designer Teammate for College Action Program mobile app design)
Contact: iz@israelcasas.com