WES World Education Services Responsive Web App
Simplifying and humanizing a daunting process to help immigrants achieve their goals
Successfully moving through ambiguity, chaos and inefficiencies
2022 - 2023
Role
Principal UX Designer, Studio b Creative Co.
Platform
Responsive Web App
Team
Mina Mansour, Dev Lead
Don Kehoe, Director of Digital Experience
Kathryn Baran, Project Manager
Martin Zak, Business Analyst
Background
WES World Education Services is a non-profit, social enterprise leader in credential evaluations. They are dedicated to helping international students, immigrants, and refugees achieve their educational and career goals
Problem
There were countless usability problems from a lack of visibility into application statuses, to understanding what a user really needed in order to begin the application process. Overall the product was disjoined and users were having trouble filling out their application, resulting in numerous customer service calls
They are the leaders in immigration evaluations — they process thousands of applications a month. The application process was complex and needed to be simpler. The business wanted to address the money they were leaving on the table through backend constraints resulting in front-end limitations
Discover & Define
The first thing I needed to do was to understand the product and the problems I was trying to solve for. I worked side by side with the Dev Lead and Digital Director. We brought in various team leads when needed to talk through any outstanding questions or understanding that I may have needed
Methodologies Used:
• Document intake; what qualitative and quantitative research already existed
• Empathy mapping
• Roadmapping
• Lean UX canvas
• Stakeholder interviews
Focus Areas:
• Application flow
• Payment and checkout
• Dashboard
Benchmark KPIs:
• Application completion time
• Decrease in support calls
• Decrease in application abandonment
Here are some of the user and business problems we identified in our intake and interviews…
• No digital uploads/lack of digital documentation
• Lack of online support
• High abandonment rates
• Users want more self-service options
• No visibility into package pricing
• Not optimized for mobile
• Evaluation process is overwhelming & lengthly
• Lack of clarity with payment process & methods
• No visibility into evaluation status
And much more…
Opportunities
After working with the team to identify and document problems. I did some ideation and provided recommendations to help address some of the problems we were hearing from users…
Crafting & simplifying the tone & voice to be more goal-oriented, while priming the user to take an action at a specific time
Introduce conversational design tactics. Making it feel like it was designed by humans for humans — while empathizing with them as they embark on this complex journey
Turn the application flow into a wizard so users feel less overwhelmed, make fewer mistakes and are more likely to complete the process
Make the resource & educational content that already exists on the consumer website accessible within the application
Helper text to help users through the complicated process
Create a more traditional status oriented dashboard that contains “intelligent” testimonials, educational resources & community oriented content to build a sense of belonging and reassurance
Introduce iconography & language that reinforces security and trust
Just to name a few!
Materialize & Prototype
This stage of the process is ongoing as is the understanding and define phases as we tackle new features
I initial started off with 2 UI concepts to get the businesses buy in on a design direction. 1 concept maintained the integrity of the concept the previous designer had created (as to not completely throw out all that work) and the second was this concept that would support a wizard application approach
Once we narrowed in on a direction (the new concept due to its simplicity and scalability). We began prioritizing features and flows so I can begin the UX design
In parallel I designed a modular design system that has increased productivity for developers and created consistency within the overall design
After getting a few core designs drafted I began discussing process and how we might improve the continuous discovery process so that we can work more efficiently. They were experiencing some of the same challenges I was with many rounds of iterations because we don’t have the decision makers involved in the discovery process. We’ve pivoted to include them and conduct a more traditional discovery when kicking off any new feature or flow. This has ensured that we’re not only working more efficiently but solving the right problems vs focusing to heavily on the solutions
Continuous prototyping is being done to get approvals from the business stakeholders
Learning and testing will be done with a subset of users in a beta environment
Outcome
Outcomes are a primary focus, especially since WES didn’t have any clear goals, objectives and weren’t doing any usability tests prior to launch. The only goal they had was to begin developing the application in February 2023 so we can beta test with a small subset of users by mid 2023
One specific challenge I ran into into was keeping the stakeholders focused when trying to nail down any specific problems and data gathering. They were accustomed to be solution oriented but are very open minded to taking a new approach and understood the benefits of doing so
The success of my part in this project has lead them to request even more than the allotted 20 hours a week so that I can provide even more UX input and conduct UX activities to better improve the experience users have with WES products. Oh yeah and they want me to work on there consumer site too!
Our outcome-based hypothesis:
We believe that creating a mobile friendly application that clearly and simply communicates the necessary steps and actions needed to complete an evaluation, will minimize the stress and accuracy of there evaluation. We will measure this through completion times — leading to more completed applications, and more confident, satisfied users.
Beta testing is scheduled for mid 2023 and the feedback will determine a go live date