Problem context
The boat is filling with water and all we have is a spoon
GrantMe is a web-app that gives highschool students personalized scholarship recommendations. We have a content team to manually update our thousands of scholarships, but we were falling behind. As the outdated scholarships piled up, so did student complaints.
Designing fast by only prioritizing essentials
This project aimed to quickly fix a growing problem affecting students. We focused on what worked fast, setting aside improvements like refining the design system. While some visuals may lack polish, the solution itself was effective and timely.
Problem scope
The scholarship update process was too slow
I shadowed and interviewed the content team to understand their flow and dig deeper into the problem.
15 minutes per scholarship
Updating 1 scholarship took 15 minutes on average
3000+ scholarships
We had over 3000+ scholarships to update
Research
The process was full of opportunities and interruptions
By shadowing and examining recordings, I identified areas of improvement.
The flow to update a scholarship
Insights
All scholarships coming up in the next 3 months need to be reviewed on a rolling basis
Team members are often interrupted when doing this task
Time was lost to…
Looking for the next scholarship to update
Finding the link to a scholarship website
Browsing the scholarship website
The whole process went across 4 different websites/pages
Review and collaboration
The research led to 2 different projects
I presented the findings to the CEO and managers of the team. From this, they also suggested operational improvements. Overall, we created two approaches to solve this problem, and delegated them to different teams.
Outcome
I became responsible for designing an internal tool to streamline the scholarship management process!
Design
Untangling a complex system with diagrams
After learning about the system from the content team, I worked with my design mentor to organize the information.
Quick and simple object-diagram of our scholarships and other info
Insights
The 2 most important flows are: Update scholarships with upcoming deadlines and update scholarships with a report
Managers and team members want to know the overall status of how many updates are needed/left
Team members don't use Detected Change warning because they don't know how to access it
Research
Inspiration from familiar tools
I researched how other tools looked, with special attention to the tools our team already uses to leverage the Consistency and Standards usability heuristic.
Tools and notes that I took inspiration from
Insights
HubSpot guided users through tasks via a top bar with a 'Next' button to move between tasks
A dashboard that focuses on one component drives faster, immediate action
A complicated dashboard (Ex. Kanban board) is slower, but gives the user a better understanding of overall progress
Design
Iterated through lo-fi wireframes with the team
I gathered quick learnings by testing lo-fi wireframes with the content team and management.
Insights
Stakeholders and team members preferred a simple list view compared to a kanban board as it was really clear what needed action next
Team members preferred when Scholarship details opened as a slideout, compared to a new page, it felt easier and faster
No navigation menu needed
Managers appreciated a summary row for easy reporting
An example of lo-fi wireframe iterations
User testing
User testing revealed a lot of confusion
I held user testing sessions with the content team and design reviews with my design mentor, product manager, and CEO. These sessions were very productive and I got a lot of actionable feedback.
Test prototype
Labels were inconsistent, users were confused if things were related
Tab groupings was confusing
Reports section would be empty most of the time, did it need that much space on the tool?
After
Made labels consistent
Adjusted tab labels and tab groups to be mutually exclusive
Turned the reports section into a conditional alert
User testing
Changing requirements: Reports are no longer first priority
Before, scholarship reports were first priority. These were reports from students or team members of scholarships with wrong information. I quickly initiated syncs with the product manager and Content Team to clarify the changes, and what we could do.
Before
Reports were first priority and looked like an important alert
Upcoming Scholarship deadlines was second priority
After
Reports moved under Upcoming Scholarships as second priority
Upcoming Scholarships is first priority
Design
Making scholarship updates faster through a slideout
From our research, we discovered that team members took a lot of time to determine the next scholarship to update. We designed a slideout and took inspiration from Hubspot's Tasks to make this process faster.
A scholarship slideout. This appears after you click into a scholarship entry in the list.
Key design choices
Scholarship status is updated with 1 click, then the system automatically transitions to the next scholarship
Most commonly updated fields are moved to the top
Website link is moved to the top, and a different colour
Results
The internal tool made scholarship updates faster
This project was very iterative and collaborative. I worked closely with team members to test prototypes, and believe this is ultimately what made the project move quickly.
Task time reduced by 5 minutes from 15 to 10 minutes.
Bonus: After this project, I was repeatedly approached by the content team to help them solve other problems.
