Star School is a language school in the United States dedicated to helping its students achieve excellence in english learning, providing a cross-cultural experience and a foundation for personal growth.
The company was created in 2012 and aims to promote innovative, student-centered teaching, where students achieve their goals.
The school has a showcase website, where the user can learn about the programs and services, consult information and apply for the exchange.
Desk research, user flow, wireframes, prototype and testing.
November 2021 – March 2022
Nicolli Mognon – UX/UI Designer
Mariana Miguel – UI Designer
Igor Cardozo – UI Designer
Mayara Sampaio – UX Lead Designer
Fabiane Gregorio – Product Manager
The biggest problem found on the site was the difficulty for students to understand the exchange process.
The Star School product was developed a long time ago and was not helping the needs of the business. Additionally, the old site did not clearly communicate the program options and did not show users what the steps and processes involved in an exchange were.
Star School already had a registration form for the user to start the process and be redirected to the service team. However, the rate of users completing the signup was quite low compared to the amount of traffic we had on the site.
So this had to be researched and tested to validate the new product interfaces.
The business objectives and goals were set to reach new students for the school. Moreover, the challenge was to understand how to expose the exchange process to the USA in a clear, organized and synthesized way, taking into account all the particularities of users and bureaucracies in order to obtain a visa.
With that in mind, I came up with two main questions for this challenge:
Improve the user experience in the application form for the program in order to increase the rate of users who complete the application.
Design scenarios so that the user can start the exchange process through our product.
Gathering information on the internet and data provided by the company, it was able to identify what users have been looking for about english exchange in the US in online search engines, blogs and channels.
The main critical point pointed out by users is the difficulty in finding information about programs, visas, costs and other services on the website. Another point pointed out is the lack of clarity in the application form, many users claimed to feel insecure when registering because of this obligation to provide personal information at the beginning of the registration process. The information was collected from social media and Yelp reviews.
``I made the payment for the registration and I am waiting for the return of the school. I don't know what documents are still missing, can someone help me?``
User is insecure with the information provided by the company
“I've been waiting for weeks for the school to respond about which visas I can apply for, but instead I only get promotions about the programs on my email.”
User frustrated with the promotions received and still has doubts about the visa.
“Messy customer service ever. I contacted them because I had many questions about the bank statement requested on the application. They kept transferring me from one lady to another, then I ended up talking to a woman that finally helped me, but she took ages to answer me back.”
User frustrated with company's customer service
“I tried to apply online, but I still don't have many documents requested. Is it possible to register by email?”
User is insecure with the information provided by the company
Based on this information, Hotjar and Google Analytics, the team raised some hypotheses to be validated with users.
These hypotheses are:
1. Trust and motivation: Are users able to complete the application, trust the site and are they motivated to get to the end?
2. Understanding and mastering the system: Could they navigate the product without problems? After starting the application, could they review the documents and submit new ones?
From these hypotheses I redesigned all the screens of the form and created the new flow for the exchange enrollment. In this way, the user can now hire a program and follow each update.
The new screens were created to provide feedback on each of the steps, as a result, the user is informed how much is left to complete the application steps.
Additionally, a new screen was created before the user proceeded to the new steps, with the purpose of preventing users from typing wrong data and saving them from filling in the information twice.
To engage the user and make him aware of the entire process of contracting an exchange, we always make it clear on each screen what he must do to proceed, mainly because we know how serious and delicate it is to send documents over the internet.
Through the test, it was possible to understand if the screens designed and all the information on the site are clear to the user. In addition, observe and listen to how users interact with our product, so that improvements can be proposed for the execution of these tasks.
Three tasks were defined accompanied by a scenario to be performed by each of the users. These tasks were defined based on the new product navigation flows
After testing with users, we identified some problems in the exchange contracting process and the distrust that users have to finish a application.
Below are the main points were spoken by users:
``Here's asking for my bank statement, but if I had to send information like that right away, I'd like to understand better how it works.``
User during task 4, about the requirement to upload the document.
``So if I want to change some information I'll need to fill in the whole step again?... I think it would be nice if there was a way to edit it, without having to go through the process again.``
User opinion when clicking to edit the application
``I would contact them to understand what happened. It doesn't say anything about the error in the review message.
User when performing task 1 talking about the ``failed`` result of the application, without understanding the reason.
``In this case, should my bank statement be equivalent to the budget provided in the email? Or does this include other expenses?
User asking for the amount needed on the bank statement
Some points listed after the tests were transformed into a list of items to be improved and hypotheses that were confirmed, they are:
Desk research and testing showed that users were wary of reporting sensitive data without having clear feedback on the status of the application.
In addition to explaining the tasks that the user needs to follow, it was necessary to add some screens explaining why these documents are requested. Consequently, users understand the need to add that information.
One of the claims made by users during the tests is that in order to be able to change information about the chosen program, it is necessary to fill in all the information again.
With the new screens, it is possible to edit the information already submitted, helping users to control this information, in case there are changes in the exchange (date, duration, programs, visa, etc).
I believe that the introduction of the UX culture to the company helped to understand that providing a better user experience increases the business and positively impacts other areas.
The data collection performed indicated problems in the product and service. Information that was unknown before the survey was carried out. It was possible to adjust some business objectives based on the results presented.
I learned the importance of collaboration between the team and especially how to communicate effectively and asynchronously, which impacted the design solutions found.
I believe that a lot can be extracted from UX culture. Making not only the end-user experience, but also that of the collaborators, is essential to involve a team and generate more collaborative teams.
April 8, 2022
UX, UI, Product Design, Prototype, Usability Test
Star School
