[Case 01]
Designing a Better College Decision Experience
Higher Education
[Project Overview]
Students make major decisions about where to attend college using information that can be incomplete, inconsistent, or misleading.
Prospective students rely on university marketing, social media, rankings, and peers to understand what a college is really like. However, these sources do not always reflect the full student experience, creating gaps between students’ expectations and the reality of attending a university, making it difficult for them to feel they have the information they need to make an informed decision.
Methods
Interviews
Experience Mapping
Design Sprint
Usability Testing
Iterative Design
Role
Primary Researcher
Project Manager
UX Design
Timeframe
5-6 Months
Platforms/ Tools
Zoom
Figma
Miro
Canva
Google Drive
Research
Figma
Miro
Canva
Google Drive
[01] Understand
I started by listening, not designing.
Before deciding what the best intervention was, I wanted to understand how students actually experienced the college decision process. I used semi-structured interviews to understand and reconstruct each student's journey. I asked questions about their experiences, from early exploration and applications through their final decision-making process and reflection after enrolling.
6 Participants · 60–90 Min Interviews · Semi-Structured · Zoom
Interview protocol and structure
I divided the interview protocol into five phases to explore students experiences throughout the college decision-making process.
I asked each participant a consistent set of core questions while allowing flexibility to explore their individual experiences in more depth.
Organizing the interviews chronologically allowed me to compare participants experiences and identify patterns across different stages of their journeys.
[02] Synthesize
Turning individual stories into patterns.
Each interview gave me one student's version of the college decision process. To move beyond individual experiences, I created an experience map for each participant, organizing their journey across the same stages and looking at what they did, thought, and felt along the way.
Why experience maps?
Participant 3 experience map - one of six maps created from interview data.
What I was looking for
Information Quality
Which sources did students actually trust?
Confusion
Where did students feel uncertain or overwhelmed?
Influence
Who or what actually shaped their decisions?
Stress
Where did pressure increase during the journey?
Translating individual journeys to shared patterns
Each map captured one student's experience, but I wanted to understand which challenges extended beyond a single participant. I compared all six maps to look for recurring moments of confusion, influential information sources, stress points, and opportunities across the decision-making experience.
Six participant experience maps compared during cross-case synthesis.
What emerged from the research
Across different experiences, the same challenge kept resurfacing: gathering more information didn't necessarily make the decision easier. Students still had to determine what mattered, compare very different options, and decide what tradeoffs they were willing to make.
Comparison wasn't
straightforward
Students were comparing schools across cost, academics, career opportunities, campus culture, social life, size, and prestige without a consistent way to weigh those factors.
Priorities became
harder to weigh
Students knew many of the things they cared about, but struggled to decide which factors should matter most when those priorities competed.
More research didn't create
confidence
Even after more research, campus visits, and advice, students could still question whether they had enough clarity to make the right choice.
Reframing the problem
At first I was looking for gaps in the information students received. The interviews showed that those gaps mattered, but they also revealed a deeper challenge: even with more information, students still struggled to compare very different options, weigh competing priorities, and feel confident making a final decision.
01·Starting Question
I started by looking for information gaps.
What information do students feel is missing or misleading during the college decision-making process?
02·What I Learned
The problem wasn't just a lack of information.
Students had plenty of information. The harder part was deciding what mattered most, weighing competing priorities, and comparing very different options.
03·Reframed Challenge
How might I help students turn their research into a decision?
I shifted toward helping students clarify their priorities, compare schools based on what matters to them, and make difficult tradeoffs.
[03] Explore
Exploring how research could become a tool.
After I had the problem reframed around decision-making rather than simply access to information, I moved into a research-informed design sprint. I used the patterns from my interviews to explore different ways a tool could help students clarify what matters to them, compare schools, and work through tradeoffs.
From insights to possibilities
I began by thinking of multiple ways the research insights could translate into an intervention. Rather than committing to my first idea, I sketched different many approaches.
Crazy 8s
Rapidly exploring multiple possible directions before committing to a solution.
Early Solution Sketch
Developing one promising direction in more detail to think through how the experience could work.
Choosing a Direction
These sketches helped me move from broad possibilities toward a more focused concept. I ultimately choose to pursue a tool that would guide students through their decision making process rather than simply give them more information.
[04] Design
Turning the concept into a decision-making experience
Once I chose a direction, the next challenge was deciding how the experience should actually guide students through a decision. I translated the research into a five-step flow designed to move students from identifying what matters to comparing their options with greater clarity.
01
Identify and rank what matters.
02
Research through those priorities.
03
Adjust as new information emerges.
04
Question what you're willing to give up.
05
See each school through what matters.
Bringing the experience to life
I translated this five step flow into an interactive prototype designed to guide students through the decision-making process not just make the decision for them. Each stage responds to a challenge that emerged in the research, from identifying what matters to making difficult tradeoffs between options.
01 · Clarify what matters
Rather than beginning with schools, I wanted the experience to begin with the student. Users identify and rank their priorities first, creating a personal framework they can return to throughout the decision process.
02 · Make the tradeoffs explicit
My research showed that students could identify many things they cared about, but deciding what mattered most became harder when those priorities competed. I designed the Clarify stage to make those tradeoffs obvious to students by asking them to respond to difficult either-or scenarios before comparing their schools. Tradeoff prompts allow students to turn abstract priorities into concrete choices to assist them in making their final decision.
03 · Turn research into a comparison
The final comparison brings the student's research, priorities, and reflections together in one place. Instead of recommending a school, I designed the tool to organize what the student learned around what mattered most to them, helping them see where each option aligns and where they may still have questions.
I wanted to make sure that the comparison synthesized the student's research without making the decision for them.
[04] Test & Iterate
Evaluating the experience and identifying opportunities for improvement
Rather than conducting the larger-scale usability study, We completed an internal evaluation of the prototype informed by usability heuristics. Walking through the experience helped us identify interaction issues, assess the clarity of key steps, and distinguish between near-term improvements and longer-term development opportunities.
What worked well
School Comparison
The comparison stage stood out as the strongest part of the experience, bringing students' research and priorities together.
The percentage alignment indicator was positively received as a way to understand how schools matched students' priorities.
The final “Ready to Decide” guidance was seen as a useful way to conclude the decision-making process.
Where the experience needs refinement
01
Make priority ranking more intuitive
The arrow controls made rearranging priorities feel tedious. Drag-and-drop ranking could provide a more natural interaction.
02
Clarify the research action
The "Click to Research" prompt was easy to overlook. Stronger visual emphasis as well as requiring these fields to be filled out before the user can move to the next page could help users understand the importance of this step and how to enter their findings.
03
Fix custom priority entry
The "Add Your Own" feature was not functioning during the walkthrough, preventing users from adding priorities beyond the predefined options.
How could we reduce research burden while maintaining user autonomy?
Build a shared school-information database
Explore preloaded school profiles containing relevant information, reducing the amount of research students need to find and enter independently.
Investigate a community-contributed model where students could add information for schools that don't yet have a profile, with a future need to consider accuracy and verification.
Remove the current limit on how many colleges students can explore and compare.
What I built & what's next
Project outcomes
Six student interviews and experience maps
Interactive college decision-making prototype
Internal heuristic-informed evaluation
Opportunities to explore
Refine priority ranking and research interactions
Explore a shared database of college information
Expand school comparison capabilities