The School of Visual Arts is a private art & design university located in New York, NY. Comprised of about 3,000 students, the
school offers a wide selection of courses of study and is particularly reputable for its 2D and 3D Animation programs. The constitution of the student body is diverse, consisting not only of students matriculating directly from US high schools; international students, transfer students, and veterans make up over 1/3 of the SVA population.  

Therefore, there is a contingent of SVA’s applicant pool is considered non-traditional: transfer, returning, and exchange students, as well as veterans. SVA aims to have an applicant portal that is useful and usable for all. In early 2021, it was particularly important that the application’s interface flow instilled security and awareness in light of COVID-19. A high volume of incoming inquiries expressed concern about what a student’s experience might look like and how it would take shape, however the school might be operating come Fall. Given that the application portal represents the entry point to the product experience, it was necessary to evaluate existing issues with the portal to and perform a redesign to scale.

In my prevoius role, I wore many hats; one of which was project manager for recruitment of non-traditional applicants.  In terms of customer service, I maintained the most direct and consistent communication with prospective and current applicants. I noticed a sharp increase in communication from applicants regarding confusion and difficulty navigating the site and finding the information they needed. I brought attention to this issue, and was tasked with conducting research and creating with my team an efficient and navigable applicant-facing site.

         

Research took shape primarily through contextual inquiry; starting with team workshopping, in which we collectively identified pain points we had observed until that point and from the previous application cycle. Our application operates through integration with Salesforce Admissions connect, so we were  able to generate a report of previous and current applicants who fell under the non-traditional categories.

We then conducted outreach to selected users, offering options for interviews in the form of Zoom calls, phone calls, or e-mail communications. Our major takeaways were that: 1) applicants struggled to find guidelines for their unique situation, 2) curricularrequirements were not clear enough, and 3) the volume of text made it difficult to find answers to quick questions or information by keyword.

From these interviews we composited the following personas: transfer student, returning student, exchange student, veteran. The next step was to create user and task flows for each persona, in an effort to resolve the first pain point. I then structured these flows into lo-fidelity wireframes, consulting with the UI lead to ensure that the components would embed seamlessly with SVA’s design patterns.

In collaboration with the Product Managers and Researchers, a prototype was developed. I then conducted a second round of outreach to facilitate internal (employee-focused) and external (user-focused) usability testing over a period of two weeks. I handed off my findings and reccomendations for priority revisions.

With the restructure of this site, the following features were added:
         
1. Reformatted header with CTAs for each user type, reopening banner, for immediate access to information.

       
       
2. Introduction section with highlighted link to application and quick search function.

   

3. Information is strategically categorized into dropdown sections to alleviate overload.