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StudentAid BC Case Study
Project Type
UX Case Study
Date
August - October 2023
Role
UI Designer, UX Designer
Taking out a loan can be a stressful, complicated process. This app supplements the site to ease worries and make information and applications easier to access and manage.
How might we streamline the student loan application process to alleviate anxiety?
To better answer that, we had to determine all the sources of anxiety within the process. As demonstrated in this short video, there are a lot of factors to consider.
Presentation Deck
Welcome to the presentation deck of our StudentAid BC Case Study. I was the head of UI design but contributed to the project throughout every part of the process.
Process
This is the process we followed using the Double Diamond approach for this project.
Problem Statement
Many students pursuing post-secondary education face significant financial stress due to the need to secure student loans, which are often hindered by the daunting and complex application process. The current web portal for student loan applications exacerbates this issue by overwhelming applicants with excessive information, failing to provide clear feedback and updates, and frequently redirecting them to other government portals.
How Might We Statement
How might we streamline the student loan application process for students enrolled in post-secondary education to alleviate the anxiety?
User Research
Our goal with our research was to gain a better understanding of user pain points and we did so with the following methods.
Interview Summary
These are some of our key findings from the user interviews we conducted.
Insights and Recommendations
From the key findings we found, we synthesized the following insights and recommendations based on them.
Emotional Journey Map
To better understand the full process and gain further empathy, we created this journey map through our interview responses of a user's emotions while navigating the site.
Persona & Empathy Map
We also created this persona and empathy map to further synthesize our interview findings.
Wireframes
We approached wireframes by tackling them individually and coming together to discuss what's working and what isn't about all of them.
Insights to Ideas
The dashboard screen we came up with from combining our wireframes.
Insights to Ideas
An application overview that allows users to see the full requirements before beginning the application.
Insights to Ideas
An assistive chat bot that is there to answer questions or clarify any confusions throughout the application.
Style Tile
Our style tile is taken from the the site directly, staying in line with government branding. The chosen typeface supports indigenous text.
User Testing
After translating our wireframes into a medium fidelity prototype, we conducted user testing.
User Test Results
This is a breakdown of the general satisfaction with the app.
Assistive Chat
The chat was not intuitive when we asked users to test the product without giving them guidance.
Form Design
The response to the form was mixed, here is a breakdown of that.
Feedback & Iteration
Focusing on the dashboard, assistive chat, and form design, here are the insights we gathered to make improvements to our initial design.
Dashboard 2.0
The interface is clearer with improved screen space usage and having the content presented in a more digestible way.
Chat 2.0
The visual design is less overwhelming with more human-like wording and suggestions at the bottom to answer common questions.
Additional Improvements
We added features such as auto-save to ease anxiety, fetch and auto-fill data to make the application less overwhelming and time consuming, and push notifications to be notified about status updates as soon as they occur.
Next Steps
The following are next steps we're considering for this app design.
Thank You
Thank you for taking the time to explore this project!
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