AtOnce

Designing a Platform to connect students, school admins and educational agencies in aims to speed the enrolment and application process

overview

I was part of a team of five working on a project that aimed to address the challenges faced by an educational institution in managing the admissions process. The institution was frustrated with the complicated and bureaucratic processes that could result in a loss of potential students. Our objective was to design and develop a web application that simplifies the admissions process, reduces the likelihood of losing potential students, and provides a seamless experience for both the institution and prospective students. My role in the project involved conducting research, interviewing users, facilitating ideation sessions, and designing and prototyping the platform. I also helped to define the relevant design principles and improve the user flow to ensure that the platform was user-friendly, efficient, and addressed the pain points of its target use

Research

Defining the problem

An educational institution is seeking to simplify the student documentation collection process, as current procedures are convoluted and can deter potential students. They desire a more efficient and streamlined approach to gathering relevant and certified documents from prospective students.
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Design process

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Project scoping and User interviews

Project Scoping and User Interviews During the project's initial stages, I facilitated a collaborative team meeting to establish project parameters and milestones, utilizing a versatile Miro board for efficient planning. In parallel, through user interviews, I identified pain points for educational institutions and agents, including data inaccuracies and language barriers. Additionally, pain points within the AtOnce platform were recognized, emphasizing the need for a user-friendly interface and streamlined processes. These insights are driving the development of AtOnce.biz to provide a seamless service, prioritizing accuracy, efficiency, and user satisfaction.

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Affinity mapping

During user interviews, the main pain points of the AtOnce platform for schools and agents were identified as incorrect and incomplete data, language barriers, different time zones, manual entry, and prioritization of workflow. From a system standpoint, the existing AtOnce platform had significant usability problems, which I identified through a heuristic evaluation. The platform was text-heavy, required excessive saving, had a clunky form builder, and inconsistency of naming conventions. These problems indicate that the AtOnce platform is not providing a desirable user experience and highlights the importance of having a user-friendly and intuitive platform that minimizes errors, re-work, and delays while maximizing productivity.

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Competitive analysis

This competitor analysis compares three educational technology platforms: Edvisor, CohortGo, and ApplyBoard. Edvisor offers a direct distribution channel to education consultants and provides a centralised platform for managing student information. Their chat feature enables organisations to communicate with agents at any time, and their course update screen is easy to understand. CohortGo offers international education payment and essential services but does not support student enrolments. They excel in agent management, allowing institutions to invite and assign tasks to agents and view their status updates. ApplyBoard connects international students and recruitment partners with educational opportunities worldwide. Their application matching feature helps organisations find the right students for courses, and their chat feature enables direct advising of students.

Key Design Principles

Key design principles derived from the research include the importance of everyone being up to date, time sensitivity, addressing pain points, reducing human error, commercial appeal, efficiency, and orientation and feedback for users. These principles highlight the need for a platform that efficiently manages large quantities of data while minimising pain points, reducing errors, and providing clear feedback to users, particularly in an international context where language barriers can be an obstacle.

Improving the User flows and information Architecture

The AtOnce platform's current onboarding user flow was deemed lengthy and confusing for users, so a new, more guided flow was proposed. This new flow emphasises understandability through conversational language and clear orientation and feedback principles. The aim is to simplify the profile building and organisation details entry process for users. Once the first onboarding session is complete, subsequent logins will also follow a simplified approach, highlighting key tasks and updates on the dashboard to prevent users from feeling overwhelmed. Additionally, an improved information architecture was developed to address users' difficulties in navigating the platform, aligning with their understanding better.

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Design thinking

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Delivery

The final produce

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Portfolio

Testimonials

Don't take my word for it

Jack Morgan's testimonial

“Malak and I worked in the same team over two client projects at Academy Xi. In both projects she was extremely organised, kept both the projects running smoothly and worked brilliantly with everyone in the team. She worked efficiently, and contributed so much creatively, she has great ideas and a fantastic understanding of the UX process. She was excellent to work with both times, and would be a fantastic addition to any UX team..”

UX Designer @ Zurich Insurance Company
Jack Morgan's testimonial

“I collaborated with Malak for a couple of years at Shoreditch Design Studio. Throughout our time together, she consistently demonstrated a fantastic eye for design, complemented by strong UX/UI skills. In addition, Malak proved to be an invaluable asset to the team, showcasing excellent communication skills in direct interactions with clients.”

Creative Director @ Shoreditch Design Studio
Aidan Street's testimonial

"I worked with Malak on a UX team project for Collabor8 Thinkspace. From the outset I was impressed by her pragmatic approach to understanding and solving the problem space, always putting the user at the centre of any design thinking. She provided the team with in depth research and valuable insights early on in the project before taking a leading role in developing, designing and testing user focused solutions within design software. She communicates her thoughts clearly and always has something of value to say, this makes working with Malak really enjoyable and I would look forward to working with her again. She was a valuable member of the team and would be an asset to any UX team in the future."

UX team coordinator at Momentumgroup
Aidan Street's testimonial

"Malak, has a sound understanding of design principles and can take a project from concept to delivery with ease. She is not afraid to question and always looks for improvements to the customer experience."

Partner Sales Manager @
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Kenneth D'souza's testimonial

“Malak is highly organised and insightful in the UX process, she thinks out of the box and has a keen eye for detail. She has a strong work ethic and is highly motivated individual. She is also a strong communicator with good design skills and a passion for UX..”

Senior UX Designer @ Symplicit
Pia Uch testimonial

“I worked with Malak on the Collabor8 Thinkspace project. She’s a driven, ambitious individual with a strong enthusiasm for the project. A skilled UX and UI designer that can turn a concept into reality upon client requests. Malak was dedicated to delivering high-quality works. She’s truly a user experience professional, knowing and working with Malak is a very pleasurable experience. Malak has an impressive work ethic that I would recommend her to any team!”

Product Designer at Frod
Billy Humble testimonial

“Malak is spectacular to work with, she works through the problem with the group and helps point out details that were overlooked, she is highly motivated and excellent communication skills. She adds great value to any Ui/Ux Team and I would highly recommend her”

UX Designer @ Defence Australia
Priya Venugopal's testimonial

“I worked with Malak on couple of projects. She has an excellent leadership skills when it comes to managing a project and team. She consistently demonstrated her solid work ethic and problem solving skills throughout the project. She is a great asset to any UX team!.”

UI Designer @ Contal Services
Adele Brizzi's testimonial

"I worked with Malak on a team project, she was a great team member and proposed a number of valuable ideas throughout the project. She took responsibility for decisions and develop a hi -quality prototype to deliver to the client. Would love to work with her again"

UX/UI Designer