EMPOWERLY

Empowerly is a tech-enabled platform for personalized highschool-to-college counseling. Their online student platform gives students access to essay editing, time-management planning, school list builder, and expert advice, which allows students to strategize their college application process.

PROBLEM

Empowerly's goal was to increase the number of users by enhancing user engagement in the Time Planner page. I was the Product Designer that organized and synthesized our user research data and created wireframes for the Time Planner page based on our findings.

DISCOVERY

USER SURVEY INSIGHTS:

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Users are motivated and independent, and 59% took control of the entire college application process.
Financial information is essential and needed, especially scholarships or any financial support
They desire a tool to assist with their college application and organized with all their tasks to avoid burn out.

USER INTERVIEW INSIGHTS:

Recording all observations, an affinity map was created to visualize user behavior, concerns, and needs.

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Essays are the hardest part of the application process due to not knowing how to write them in a way that is compelling and also just the numbers of essays they needed to write.
Users need a more accessible and efficient way to partner/work with their college counselors due to conflicting availability and importance of compatibility between student and counselors.
The difficulty of researching, organizing, and tracking college application requirements. Students said that application could be confusing with all the needed Information, so researching and having someone to look over their submission was important.
- “It would’ve been nice to have a website with all the deadlines.”

For the complete user research data synthesis, click here.

HEURISTIC ANALYSIS:

There were a few problems we were trying to tackle with this project.

The To-Do List and the Agenda are not consistent.
The two features were not working together. Tasks created on the To-do List were not in sync with the Agenda creating a confusing experience.
The ineffectiveness of the Agenda
The Agenda is also not usable. Users cannot perform any task that will help them with their planning process. Its meant to follow any input that is coming from the To-Do List, but as mention earlier, the interaction between them is not intuitive.
Use of interactive elements that are inoperative
Colors and text indicate an interaction element, but users are unable to interact with it. With interaction missing and users struggling what is “clickable” and what is not, the user will find it frustrating and ultimately not very usable.

HYPOTHESIS

Research has validated that our users are motivated and independent. While a great trait to have, this can cause massive stress to our users. We believe that addressing the usability issues and adding new features in our time planner will tremendously improve the experience. Developing this product can lead to an increase in user engagement and deliver value to our potential users.

KEY QUESTIONS:

How might we guide our students through their college application process in a friendly, informative, and engaging way? (KEY QUESTION)
How might we create a program to keep our users engaged long term?
How might we congratulate and show progress of our students without making the online platform heavy and less simple?

IDEATION

USER STORIES

I started creating user stories to determine June’s needs and goals while using the Time Planner while also identifying what the system needs to do for when she uses it.

WIREFRAMES + WIRE FLOWS

I sketched a couple of ideas to show the Lead Project Manager and discussed the best solution to address the student’s needs. We spoke about the constraint of the software engineer’s bandwidth. I created these wireframes to focus on the usability of the new time management feature. These wireframes helped the team look objectively at the feature’s ease of use, and allow clarification of the new features. I also completed wire flows to quickly develop and test the user stories’ flows. It also helped the speed between iterations and improves the communication between the Lead Product Manager and me.

SOLUTION

Redesigning the To-do List and the Agenda to present the materials that will provide users the right information will help achieve productivity and efficiency.