Jia Design - All College Search Redesign

Product Overview

The All College Search Programs Listing Page at All Star Directories serves as the essential hub for all education searches. It acts as a comprehensive directory, showcasing a curated list of programs that perfectly match user queries.
This page also holds a special place for our valued business partners, highlighting their sponsored offerings. It's where education exploration meets partnership support, making it a pivotal destination for both seekers and collaborators alike.

My Contributions

🦋 Orchestrating project requirements and guiding iterative design, from MVP development to extensive revisions, as the sole designer.

🦄 Overcoming the hurdle of an outdated design system by conducting thorough testing, resulting in improved product performance and enhanced user experience.

🛼 Effectively tackling the challenge of insufficient user feedback, leading to a significant reduction in churn rate and the establishment of stronger, lasting customer connections.

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About All Star Directories

All Star Directories (ASD) Prefilter is an online platform that helps individuals advance their careers and improve their lives through education.

At All Star Directory, we understand that they are not just looking for a job change; they are seeking a chance to redefine their lives. Our platform goes beyond traditional career central education searches. We are a catalyst for life-changing moments.
Because everyone deserves a chance to pursue greatness.

Our Users and Business Partners

For Students: They endeavor to be a valuable resource for adults seeking to improve their lives through education.

For Schools: They strive to help schools reach their enrollment goals, especially with post-traditional students.

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01
Problem Context

As a customer, outdated information and excessive irrelevant content on the website may lead to a lack of trust and frustration.
As a company, there is a need to address the legacy issues and modernize the platform to appeal to new users and increase engagement.

Goals

🟣 Increase brand awareness

🟣 Drive user engagement

🟣 Improve conversion rates

Challenges 🧗‍♀

Navigating this project as a solo designer, while contending with an outdated design system and addressing a lack of user feedback resulting in a high churn rate, presents significant challenges.

About the market

I have conducted competitive analyses targeting prominent educational brands and program rankings. This has led to the revelation of a potent market trend: personalized education.

Leveraging this, our business strategy highlights our unique selling point – a listing page that empowers users to directly select and tailor their educational options in the retraining domain, thereby obtaining precise and relevant information. This distinct personalization aspect sets us apart, as it empowers individuals to make informed decisions based on their specific needs and preferences.

Leveraging competitive analysis alongside All Star Directories' unique attributes, I swiftly iterate to prepare for forthcoming discussions with diverse stakeholders. This approach enhances our comprehension of team expectations, ensuring effective alignment.

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02
Exploration

Constraints

Addressing constraints is a pivotal aspect of my early-stage exploration process. By doing so, I gain a comprehensive understanding of the project's boundaries and possibilities. This approach allows for a more nuanced exploration of the UX case study's challenges, enabling a refined and professional analysis of limitations and opportunities.

UX Audit

Addressing constraints is a pivotal aspect of my early-stage exploration process. By doing so, I gain a comprehensive understanding of the project's boundaries and possibilities. This approach allows for a more nuanced exploration of the UX case study's challenges, enabling a refined and professional analysis of limitations and opportunities.

Identify User Problems & Ideas

"How can we make it easy for users to select multiple programs while also providing a simple way to narrow down their search results?"
From 30-hour foundational user interviews …

The challenges within the context of this project are multi-fold:

1. The click-through rate for refined results is below 5%, showing a significant engagement gap

2. Absence of program previews hampers effective decision-making due to a lack of essential information.

3. Discrepancy between user expectations and outcomes could lead to reduced satisfaction and retention.

To encapsulate, the project confronts issues such as a low click-through rate for refined results, the lack of program previews, and the misalignment between user expectations and delivered outcomes. Addressing these challenges is pivotal for optimizing the user experience and achieving higher engagement rates.

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03
Design

RFI and LinOuts

I collaborated with various stakeholders to determine the optimal UX and interface design. Through constructive discussions, we refined design elements that align with project goals and user preferences, ensuring a cohesive and user-centric approach. Below are screen recordings from both Desktop and Mobile

Mobile Flow

Desktop Flow

Due to our predominant mobile user base, it is customary to prioritize the design of the mobile flow first. Subsequently, this mobile-centric design is extended to desktops, which involve creating prototypes for user testing purposes.

The RFI selection flow is streamlined and straightforward.

"It helps you select and deselect your programs more easily. Everything is organized."

- User Interview Quote

25% ↑
RFI Conversion Rates

Linkouts have been designed to be more intuitive, ensuring users are aware of navigation and how to return.

"I understand that this takes me to another page. What's difficult about that?"

- User Interview Quote

40% ↑
LinkOuts Clicking Rates

Refine Search Results

Virtually all users demonstrate proficiency in utilizing the refine results function. Post-design implementation, Refine button click rates have experienced a significant improvement.

Impact:

Nearly all users are proficient in utilizing the refine results function.
Refine button click rates improved from <5% to ~17%.

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04
Additional Challenge

I identified an additional challenge: when users conduct a search and do not find the desired schools, our approach is to prompt them to broaden their search scope. However, this suggestive message is seldom acted upon by users in practice.

Rapid A/B Test

Both of these approaches received endorsement from the team and stakeholders, leading me to conduct A/B testing. The majority of test users opted for solution 2, which has the potential to expand our user base.

Impact

Email signup enhances user acquisition channels, boosts website conversion rates, and expands the potential customer base.

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05
Conclusion

The end-to-end experience

In addition to creating the Upload Happy Flow, I also designed the comprehensive end-to-end user experience across all platforms. Typically, I develop complete flows, expand component and library sets, and oversee quality assurance (QA). Below, I've included some of the files that I've partially handed off.

Before / After

Learnings

Always evaluate the user journey end-to-end. Even though we are focusing on solving the selecting flows, A holistic evaluation of the user journey, including the empty space, is necessary.

What can be improved?

Augmenting "About" Experience: Moving forward, we have the opportunity to enrich the About page's UX by incorporating a user-friendly pop-up preview. This feature could provide users with a convenient way to explore additional information without disrupting their current browsing session.

Elevating User-Centric Language: As part of continuous improvement, refining our UX writing to infuse a more human touch could foster a deeper connection with users. Tailoring our language to resonate with users on a personal level can create a more relatable and inviting interface.

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