Primary research
Understanding international students
We talked to 10 international students, recruited through UserTesting.com. These students were from countries with a history of high outbound international student enrolment—mainly Pakistan, Nigeria, Philippines, and Iran. Our goal was to understand the needs and challenges faced by students in their study abroad journey at the point of applying for their IELTS test.
Insights
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Students are overwhelmed by the amount of information available to them regarding study abroad. It’s difficult to find programs that align with their interests, and to research, compare, and organize requirements for multiple programs can be an exhausting process.
✈️
Students already feel confident in their desired destination country at the time of visiting the IELTS site. Students base their choice of English test based on what is accepted at their destination country (for example, IELTS is accepted in the US, UK, + Canada).
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Over third-parties and other schools, they trust previous international students the most when it comes to advice on study abroad. They trust them to give real insight into how the study abroad process.
Personas
Creating archetypes
I consolidated the results into multiple archetypes. First, outlining all of the common traits and insights from all participants. This included information like major pain points, and considerations students take into account when studying abroad.
- A way to quickly shortlist and find programs based on their eligibility
- Centralized guidance and resources for applying to schools
- Too many tasks to complete per application
- Difficult to find affordable and accredited programs
Next, I created two archetypes—these archetypes have traits in common which are outlined by the common one above, but also have clear differences that required them to be separated out.
First, we have the guidance-seeking student. These students prefer to be assisted at each step of the way in order to increase their chances of being success while studying abroad. They want guidance on what programs to select, how to write essays for their application, and how to maximize their chances of success.
- Easy way to find accredited places to study within their budget restrictions
- Trustworthy agents who can use prior experience to help guide student
- Difficult to find reliable organizations that will help increase their chances of admission without taking advantage
Now, we have the self-reliant student. This student prefers to self-apply to university, and doesn’t trust agents or third parities to assist them with their application. They want to be successful, and they only trust themselves and verified third parties to do so.
- Centralized guidance and resources for navigating through the application journey
- Ability to submit a single application to multiple schools and programs
- Long response times from university representatives
- Distrust of third party organizations and agents
Getting started
Initial constraints
Due to an very fast approaching deadline, I had to create a single draft that would immediately go into development. As such, I had multiple constraints with my initial designs.
🎨
The branding for the first iteration had to fit within British Council’s web branding.
✍️
Content was quickly ideated, approved by BC, and added to the mockups.
🔬
Fields of study are pulled using the same API as ApplyBoard’s program catalogue.
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Given a very specific frame size that the design had to fit on within the BC site.
Iteration 1
The ugly duckling
For our first release (after some rapid in-house usability testing because of the short timeline), I settled on this design: or as I like to call it, the ugly duckling.
📢
Highlighting accredited programs and schools available on ApplyBoard, with their logo and destination country.
👀
Students select up to 5 of their desired fields or study, and toggle to allow their profile data be used to refine their results.
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Students are matched with 5 programs based on their fields (and if agreed, their profile), and are prompted to head to AB.
As you can see, there are various issues we can point out immediately with these designs, and that testing quickly uncovered.
Blended British Council and Applyboard’s colours and styling in a hybrid scheme
ApplyBoard’s field of study names are too long, requiring truncation on most fields
Each text blurb is too long to engage users on first impression
Recommendation engine started recommending non-filtered programs.
Iteration 2
Re-imagining
After the initial version was launched, we took a few weeks to watch the metrics on Mixpanel of how users were engaging with the widget, and points of interest (as mentioned above).
In our new iteration, we addressed the following:
🎨
Settled on using soft ApplyBoard branding throughout widget
💬
Reduced the amount of text on first and last page
🌎
Targeted multiple countries with profile images and patterned backgrounds
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Backend improvements to improve program recommendation output
Using the data
Targeting high volume countries
How might we attract students from specific countries?
In order to attract students from different countries that have a history of high outbound international students, we made custom landing pages for the widget per country; focusing on Pakistan, Nigeria, Thailand, (pictured below in order) Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Iran, and the Philippines.
I designed the above pages after conducting extensive research; the top destination countries, programs of study, and levels of study that students from these countries study at when going abroad. Alongside that, I also investigated patterns and motifs that have special significance in each country to add as a background of each.
Wrap-up
Reflecting
This project was lots of fun! We learned and iterated quickly, and were able to improve the designs with each iteration. As a next step for this project, I would conduct another round of usability testing on the new design (as opposed to just relying on internal testers) to improve it further.
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