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ScholarsHQ Case Study
ScholarsHQ Case Study
My Role
I led the design of the social community experience between October 2021 and December 2021 and collaborated with the engineers in conducting research and some best practices research. In addition, I worked alongside product managers, my employer, who’s a business analyst, but I handled all the research, facilitation of ideation workshops, wireframes, prototyping, content strategy, usability testing, and iterations. I stopped working on the project during the detailed visual design phase as the app started to be built. The app launched globally on February 11th, 2022. And some usability updates have been implemented ever since then.
Problem Statement
In the early 2010’s, being able to find scholarship opportunities around the world on websites felt like a great relief for africans. By the start of 2020, this magic receded to a slew of spammy websites and mobile apps that made finding authentic opportunities hard and very repetitive which affected users experience. I was part of an ambitious project to redesign the Scholarships Africa app now rebranded to be called ScholarsHQ, experience for the fastest growing startup in Nigeria.
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of ScholarsHQ.
Hypothesis
In just one year since 2020, Scholarships Africa transformed from a scholarships listing website into a scholarships vetting service for thousands of people in West Africa. By 2021, Scholarships Africa delivered over 1,000 scholarship applications in 6 countries. The Scholarships opportunities app — designed in 2020, struggled to scale alongside the hyper-growing need of the general audience. Fundamental usability was challenged. The app seemed very empty asides just displaying scholarships for users to apply. App reliability and performance issues increased exponentially and the mobile app became redundant as it was doing exactly what websites could do easily and it needed to be more.
Objectives and Goals of the Project
Our goal for the project was to bring in some magic to Scholarships Africa. The original premise was simple: tap a button, find opportunities, but beyond that, stay informed and become a part of an international community of scholars. However, we weren't trying to revert to a simple past. Our ambitions were to create a strong foundation that embraced a rapidly evolving business and a more diverse user base.
Our high level goals were to:
Make it fast and easy to use for everyone, everywhere.
Give students opportunities and more control over their time and money.
Create a platform for innovation, socialization, and deeper engagement.
Help parents track the academic details of their kids
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First Version MVP App
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New Version App
Now read more about how we arrived at this final output
Business Opportunities
Picking up the pieces. At the outset of the project, we didn’t have a clear mission or specific goals for the pickup experience. Without pre-existing insights, I as the only designer and researcher in the team conducted some usability testing research on the existing application to explore how users were getting around doing things on the app and how they felt while doing these things.
Quantitative Research
For our user research process, we decided to interview and conduct surveys to better get to know what our users need. Surveys are a great first look at the customer environment because they provide quantitative data. Also, I love applying qualitative research (interviews) to fully understand how to approach the design.
Key 1
We’re definitely building for millennials
Key 2
Most users are mobile device users, thus they need the app
Key 3
Parents want needful insights on their Kids academics
Key 4
Some people are skeptical about signing up for apps that waste their time
Qualitative Insights
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Unauthentic feel of the interface:
Users felt like they couldn’t trust the organization in delivering authentic opportunities because the interface was overly empty and felt too much like a blog. The user expected the app to do the job of making them feel comfortable and to get personalized updates on opportunities that matched their criterias.
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Lack of personalization and notifications:
User were frustrated with having to go through the entire list of opportunities in order to find something that fits their preferences. Users expected our app filters & recommendations to be smarter by understanding their interests.
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No way to stay up to date with the latest happenings:
Often, Users did not know much about the latest happenings around international scholarships and ould love to know more about countries and other peoples experiences before they commit to applying is those specific countries. The only way was to actively search through google to find news about these updates and changes.
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Pin setters and button mashers:
Users behave in two distinct ways. Those who actively know wha they want and are ready to apply immediately (via search or pin) and those that need to b able to save these opportunities for later use.
Before I could jump into designing, it was important to define success and understand the health of the search experience at scale. Prior to the redesign, contact rate, i.e., the rate at which users find what they’re actually looking for during the search, was the only proxy we had used to measure the effectiveness of our layout. Thus, I unpacked the concept of the fun swipe and scroll model for the dimensions of the opportunities to utilize space and manage anxiety.
Empathy Maps
In beginning to empathize with my users, I initially thought of them as two separate groups— Students looking for scholarhips, and Students with scholarships looking to give advise and tips. But in conducting empathy maps, I realized that between these two groups, there was a lot of overlap in their thoughts and feelings. I ultimately developed some personas.
User Personas
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Persona 1: Planning to Study Abroad
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Persona 2: Studying Abroad
Reframing the problem
Poorly formed and represented interface plans cause downstream usage problems.
The Scholarships Opportunities app exacerbates the formation of problematic usage between users and scholarship sponsors. Problematic pickup plans consist of inaccurate information, ambiguous information, and inefficient features that cause confusion. Additional searches, verifications, and additional physical effort is required from users to recover, which leads to frustration and wasted time.
“...how might we help users form an attachment to the app?”
Information Architecture (IA)
The IA was crafted with the idea of ease of navigation and clarity. navigation and forms the skeleton of this design project. Visual elements, functionality, interaction, and navigation are built according to the information architecture principles, then based on the user needs and problems I reached earlier. This way I'm sure I avoid designing bad navigation and prevent users from being lost and feeling annoyed.
User Flow Diagrams
I designed the flow based on the idea of a social communications channel. If ScholarsHQ is confident of the users needs, it does all the heavy lifting. Otherwise, the app prompts the users to validate their needs and wants.
Instead of designing for the right answer, I designed a flexible system optimized for learning and optionality. But first I broke things down into simpler user stories.
Design System
Colors & Typography
Wireframes & Sketches
We made a visual storyboard to study how they will explore these features and what are all the circumstances they use in this app.
Our initial concept was to showcase the feed in a forums format like a blog update style. But our sprint usability test validated that
96% of testers didn't exactly feel confident with the navigation. Hence, this idea is not feasible.
Insufficient space to showcase the scholarships.
It became tricky to navigate and find scholarship opportunity details at a glance.
Second Round Wireframe
Based on the feedback, we propose our design in portrait view with more familiar navigational pattern.
UX Design: Key Moments
Opportunities & Offers
Beyond scholarships, we introduced internships, job opportunities, and all these opportunities are now fully automated to show the users the necessary information to prompt them to take action. Now these opportunities are now geolocated and make use of your device location to match you with possible opportunities near you. And we integrated these ideas in a very simple, intuitive, and engaging way to interact with listed items.
Usability Heuristics
User Control and Freedom: Provide clear exit points and undo options.
Consistency and Standards: Following platform conventions.
Error Prevention: Design the system to prevent errors with clear and helpful error messages.
WCAG Score
Level AA
Year
13/01/2021
Feeds & Social Community
The all-new post feeds are our introduction to the social aspects of the app. Users should be able to write about their experiences and tag them to main topic categories using hashtags so that other users can interact and ask questions and keep conversations going. The everyday user has something to say or some information to share with others. The best way to do that is through user interactions and the affordance to create custom posts.
The Launch
The Most Radical Update Since its inception. In the first 5 months after my involvement on the project, the team continued to evolve and polish the visual design, as well as finesse the finer functional details as the app was being built. Although I was not part of this process, it was great to see most of my work brought to life. On February 22nd, 2022, the new app launched, & we set up a marketing campaign to really boost popularity—an impressive achievement by the team, considering that it was a complete redesign and rebuild from scratch. ScholarsHQ was rebranded to become Japa + in July 2022.
The Impact
Since launch, we’ve had positive results and much more to do. The redesign of the product on iOS and Android has had a positive impact on the signup conversion rates, at the time of writing (4 months since launch). However, the contact rate has not been significantly decreased which means users continue to find opportunities that fit their preferences. I believe this to be a behavior change that will reveal over a longer period of time.
Key Learnings
The design thinking process is very iterative, and it’s firstly important to understand the idea that you're working on.
When the research is done well, you generate valid ideas better and faster.
Feedback is important, but if you have some innovative and disruptive ideas, test and validate them by making tweaks.
Trying to accomplish too much creates chaos, constraints are important.
Taking breathers is good, you might end up making some not-so-great choices. Taking a break and starting again with a fresh mind is always the better thing to do.