Destination YOUniversity

Improving admission services accessibility

Primary role:

UX Designer

Time frame:

May '23 - Dec '23

Industry:

Counseling Service

Responsibilities:

Usability testing analysis, User flows and User journeys and Feature design

Overview

Getting to know the client

Background of DestinationYOUniversity earlier known as Dr Cynthia Colon's website

Destination YOUniversity, led by Dr. Cynthia Colon, specializes in providing consultation services to first-generation students, focusing primarily on crafting compelling college essays for successful admissions.
Dr. Cynthia Colón is a college admission, expert, author and dream builder. She has worked with countless of students on guiding them in hopes of getting them into the dream college of their choice. What makes her services stand out the most are that they cater to first generation students. Being a first generation student herself, she wanted to accommodate to parents and students who are low income/minorities/ and those who  do not have comprehensive knowledge of how to get admitted to college.

20+ Years in consulting servicebusiness
Title 3
Encourage women to overcome inhibitions, speak about Taboo topics of Contraception and normalise discussions of stigmatised topics.
Title 2
Enables connection of women with other women who belong to similar communities, have faced similar challenges, and most importantly, experienced and educated doctors and experts.
Title 1
Empowers women with information and resources about Contraception, its methods, the latest research and development in the field from legitimate sources, All in One Place
10K+ students get admitted to choice colleges
Title 2
Enables connection of women with other women who belong to similar communities, have faced similar challenges, and most importantly, experienced and educated doctors and experts.
Title 1
Empowers women with information and resources about Contraception, its methods, the latest research and development in the field from legitimate sources, All in One Place
Title 3
Encourage women to overcome inhibitions, speak about Taboo topics of Contraception and normalise discussions of stigmatised topics.
90% success rate to top 100 colleges of USA

The Client's Challenge

The Client's Challenge

Despite being so much success what is the challenge that Dr Cynthia Colon's website is facing

The company's online presence, particularly Dr. Colon's website, serves as a crucial gateway for prospective clients seeking guidance in the complex college admissions process. But according to Dr. Cynthia Colon, the existing website is not getting expected sales.

"Website is not leading users to services I offered such as essay bootcamp, dream college academy, etc.."

Dr Cynthia Colon

Stakeholder interviews revealed major problems faced by the website

#1
Low Conversion Rates

#2
Complex Navigation

#3
User Engagement Challenge

#4
Complicated Labels

The Solution

The Solution

Validating Clients challenge through assessing UX by website audit and user interviews

Heuristic analysis outlining the key usability problems and improvement opportunities.

Analysis

Interviews

Analysis

Interviews

3 key website improvement areas based on Stakeholder Interviews and Audit

Improve navigation system
Improve navigation system
Redesign clunky scanning UX
Redesign clunky scanning UX
Improve visual hierarchy
Improve visual hierarchy

From UX to UI

From UX to UI

Dr. Cynthia (the client) was drawn to my sketches and was eager to collaborate in the design process

Sketches carry minimal risk and give me the freedom to explore the product layout without the added complexity of design tools.While the sketches below are somewhat abstract, I begin with low fidelity to concentrate on the core aspects of the design.
These sketches grabbed Dr. Cynthia's attention towards my design process, and she wants to collaborate within the design process.

Initial Sketches

Initial brainstormed sketches

Designs

Designs

Strive for better, not perfect

We already had a design system in place, and Dr Cynthia don't really wanted to change it. It allowed me to dig into how the UX data could inform and shape the UI components.
From sketch iterations to design iterations.

Home Page Design

Bootcamp Page Design

Service Page Design

Reflections

Reflections

Key takeaways and lessons

I learned an irreplaceable lesson, on how to work with a stakeholder, and how to think critically, while keeping the user in mind while also keeping in mind of our stake holder and reflected what she wanted. Designing was bit of a challenge keeping within her own “accessibility” guidelines, but it gave me real world experience come the time where I work with clients.