Application system

Context

Image: My designs of various application states

For this project, the primary personas represented two major user types:

• Students - submitting and managing application
• University staff - reviewing students’ applications

The application system was a long, segmented form, with screens for monitoring progress and status

Problem

Image: Flow demonstrating how many obstacles users must complete before starting the application

Application form was very long and would require multiple sessions to complete

Question wording was sometimes obtuse, but couldn't be changed for legal reasons

Major, and often opaque, technical contraints from legacy systems and development capability within UCAS

Balancing the students' need to easily and quickly complete, against the universities' need for accurate and comprehensive data

Design approach

Image: Diagram UX flow

With complex requirements and flows, heavy design thinking needed to go into the UX journey for each feature

I would collaborate with product owners, specialists, and engineers to understand the constraints and opportunities

Using experience and knowledge of usability and the application UX as a whole, I guided implementation to minimize usability and content design risks

Image: Mobile and desktop application homepage

The application was complex, and usually accessed on desktop devices in schools

However, using responsive and progressive enhancement principles allowed me to design for a mobile experience

Tasks such as checking status and responding to alerts was shown from user research to be the crucial opportunity of the mobile experience for students

Image: Wireframes showing a specific UX flow

In addition to the main application journey, there were subtasks and niche scenarios

What a user could do often depended on complex criteria, which were challenging to communicate clearly

I often needed to articulate these journeys to stakeholders and SMEs in order to validate the logic against the necessary process

I also ran webinars and seminars with users (universities, teachers) to understand their needs and issues with the journeys under review

Collaboration

Image: Showing a different design style to align with UCAS' website

In addition to my main work on the application, I worked with other teams within the business

Using my knowledge of the application software, I designed a search function for students in clearing

This required me to use the website style guide, and also switch from Figma to Adobe xD in order to pick up assets from another designer