In Fall 2017, our team was provided the opportunity of collaborating with Sheridan’s International Office. The task was to re-examine and enhance the user experience of the online application process for international students. In essence- creating a redesign of Sheridan’s International Student Application.
In September of 2017 alone, Sheridan received 13,564 non-unique applications. In a calendar year, this totals in 25,000+ applications from more than 100 countries. This large amount of traffic signifies the importance of an intuitive, user-friendly, and functional application experience for Sheridan’s prospective international students.
The existing application had low user-satisfaction ratings because it lacked an intuitive interface. This issue has cost the college greatly in the past years as these potential students have misunderstood the application and made incorrect choices due to the absence of helpful features to guide them.
This leads to a troublesome back-and-forth in communication with the student, which obstructs them in their goal of enrolling into Sheridan College.
We conducted research to determine key issues with the application. This was completed through in-person interviews and online surveys. Eight students who had used the application prior to their enrollment were interviewed about their experiences and frustrations with the online web application. Personas were then developed based on the raw data collected.
We conducted research to determine key issues with the application. This was completed through in-person interviews and online surveys. Eight students who had used the application prior to their enrollment were interviewed about their experiences and frustrations with the online web application. Personas were then developed based on the raw data collected.
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Note: Interviewing only Sheridan students potentially created a bias against those students who were hindered by the application to the point of being unable to complete it, an issue we later realized would require further investigation in the future.​​​​​​​
After several weeks of conducting user research and analysis, we were able to determine the main issues with the previous design and developed corresponding solutions:
A visibly dated design combined with little to no visual indication of Sheridan branding made users initially hesitate upon seeing the application. According to our interviews, this was particularly concerning since payment was involved in the application process and users were hesitant to follow through because they doubted the site's legitimacy.
To solve this, I developed design guidelines that modernized the application while keeping it consistent with Sheridan's brand.
The application made it difficult to correct errors in user input, so users were constantly worried about their inputs and progress. To solve this, we added an "auto-saving" indicator to notify users when the application has saved progress, but also included a "save and quit" button to give a sense of security when exiting the application.
Users were often confused and lost by the layout and poor navigation. To solve this, we created a dashboard that allows users to go back and forth between sections and indicates if the user has missed a mandatory or optional input field in each section.
I created the final click-through prototype using Adobe XD to present our proposed changes to the application: