Dual studies is a mode of studies that combines work & study. In order for an application process to be successful, applicants need to find a partner company.
Although the university offers support in matching with a company, the possibility of finding the right fit is higher when applicants apply for multiple study start dates, or even multiple degrees.
🦄 User Problem: The existing application form only allow users to apply for one specific degree, starting at one specific time. For the best chance of finding a partner company, users must fill out multiple applications.
🏢 Business Problem: Some applicants failed to start a degree with the university because they did not find a partner company and did not know that they can apply for multiple degrees and study start dates.
🙋♀️ My Role:
Ideation on early concepts, presenting to stakeholders and lead designer, crafting test set up, ensuring design feasibility and handing off to engineers. Review and testing before releasing. Collaborating with multiply cross functional teams, eg. CRO, product, text and development.
🔎 Monitoring: A/B test // Mouseflow recordings // Google Analytics
🔧 Design tools: FIGMA // Mouseflow
⌚ Project Period: Q1 2022
🔥 KPIs: Number of applications which include multiple degree and start date options.
This will lead to increasing the chance to find a partner company and therefore ideally increase the number of new students overall.
Requirement
🚀 User flow for single application needs to stay available (Multiple application should not be forced).
🚀 User need to be able to apply for up to 3 degrees or study start dates.
Solution
👍️ Options for multiple application will only be shown after interacting with the form.
👍️ Giving the user the option to add second and third degree via inoffensive text button.
🔥 This way the form is not cluttered with fields for users who just want to apply for one degree.
🚀 Users should be able to pick their 1st choice degree / study start when applying for multiple degrees
Challenge
😰️ I looked into a drag and drop solution to select the 1st choice by order. It was very cluttered and hard to use, because a selection always contains 2 form fields — a degree and start date.
Solution
👍 A clear journey: user marks their first choice after selecting degrees and start dates, the order of form fields does not matter.
👍 User has full flexibility with the option to delete and add degrees and start dates as often as needed.
🚀 Needs to be easy to use on both desktop and mobile.
Solution
👍 Due to space constraints on mobile devices I altered the design to keep full flexibility for deleting, adding and marking first preference.
Constraints:
🔴 Multiple applications are only allowed within one study location.
Challenge
😰️ If users change location after making their degree and start date selection, the availability of degrees can change. Making their previous choices invalid.
Solution
👍 Appropriate error and success messages when necessary. Also, an Info-Box that informs the user clearly about changes in their selection after switching location.
Monitoring/Next steps:
🔥 We monitored user recordings to ensure ease of use of the feature on both mobile and desktop. These confirmed users were able to fully exercise options available to them, through deleting, adding, changing locations and selecting their first choice.
Monitoring revealed that users often looked for a summary before submission. This will be one of the next projects integrating on the application form.
Results:
🔥 Successfully increased the number of multi-degree and multi-start date applications.
