BACKGROUND

Iterations (2019-2020)

The “Counselor Cafe” went through several iterations as we developed and tested Corsava For Counselors. The first major shift was to streamline the information and change the overall design of the Cafe to closer align with the brand. Edges were curved and elements from the Corsava Cards were brought in (the colleges were given a card treatment). This moved the platform from a dry database to a more friendly, community-focused feeling.

With the addition of college recommendations, we tested the Cafe as a premium feature. During this time, we received feedback that counselors wanted more ways to refine college lists. After filtering by student, we added the ability to sort the colleges by “Admit Rate” and by “Recommended.” We also rebuilt the Help Center to better support counselors while we slowly rolled out new features and pricing plans.

In the fall of 2019, Corsava began development on Corsava For Students and Corsava For Families. In order to directly reach students and families, we discovered that we would need to expand our counselor platform to better serve high school counselors. Our problem had changed and we needed to shift our focus to designing for a different user base.

PROBLEM

High school counselors are overworked and under resourced. High school counselors need a tool that will allow them to quickly and efficiently support hundreds of students through the college admissions process. 

SOLUTION 

Scale Corsava to meet the needs of high school counselors. Create a streamlined platform for counselors that will allow them to manage a large student caseload and give them the resources to identify colleges where their students will thrive and graduate.

TARGET USERS

High school counselors and private counselors with large student case loads

PROCESS

Discover // Define // Ideate // Design

DISCOVER

I combed through support logs and counselor interviews in order to identify key pain points and roadblocks. 

Takeaways:

• Counselors didn’t know there was a “Cafe”

• Counselors didn’t look in the “Cafe”

• Counselors didn’t know that Corsava was generating college recommendations based on students’ Card sorts

• Adding a student was overly complicated

• Students frequently experienced errors during registration

• Counselors wanted to be able to take action with large groups of students at once (for example, bulk printing)

• Counselors weren’t adding their reviews

DEFINE

Personas

Corsava already had developed personas. To address the problem, I focused on two of those users: Anne and Evelyn.

• Evelyn is high school counselor. She has limited time and resources but is generally tech-savy. She works in a medium-sized high school and spends about 30 minutes on the college process with each student per year. Due to her time constraints, Evelyn typically automates her Corsava work. She has the students take the Corsava Card sort online and the student shares their Corsava Reports with their family members.

• Anne is a private counselor. She works with 2-5 students at a time. She is not a tech-native and typically prefers to do the Corsava Card sort with the hardcopy cards. She enters the Card sort into Corsava and presents college options to the student and their families herself.

Based on our personas and user feedback, I created an outline and framework to address the pain points that blocked counselors from utilizing features within Corsava. The challenge would be to pivot and focus on Evelyn, without alienating Anne.

Architecture

To simplify the overall experience (and pricing), we dissolved the “Counselor Cafe” and rolled it into Corsava for Counselors. Now when counselors log in, they go straight to what was the “Counselor Cafe” and can quickly start working with their students’ card sorts, researching and reviewing colleges, and getting college recommendations.

IDEATE

User Flows

Keeping Evelyn in mind, we included features and removed steps in order to automate more of the process. Defaults would be set to directly allow students access to their college recommendations. A more robust student management system, notifications and a toolbar were also created to accommodate higher student case loads.

Based on counselor feedback, student onboarding was the most common pain point. To solve for this, we fixed several issues on the back end and designed a more streamlined process. A key design change was the toolbar. I designed a floating toolbar to quickly get counselors to valuable features including adding students, adding Corsava Card sorts, and accessing support.

DESIGN

WIREFRAMES

The primary design challenge was to simply the information and features in Corsava For Counselor. To achieve this, I went through several iterations removing more and more of the visual clutter.

FINAL MOCKUPS

When establishing success measurements, the word that came up most often was “fun.” The platform had to offer a robust set of features but still feel fun. In the final design, I focused on soft, rounded shapes, playful icons, and being more intentional with the use of our brand colors. Teal was used as our primary color and the secondary colors corresponded to the categories in the Corsava Cards. I also created a more airy, minimalist design so that the bright colors in the brand would pop and not overwhelm counselors.

RESULTS

I created a follow-up user survey that was to be sent out following the platform updates (including pricing changes). Prior to rollout, the project was cancelled. However, based on early, informal testing, counselor feedback was positive.

Personal takeaways

Through this project, I learned to be agile and think on my feet. Corsava was a start-up with a 100% remote team. As the only designer in the company, I wore the hat of UX researcher, UX designer, interaction designer, and UI designer – and at times marketer, fundraiser and business strategist.

The work was fast-paced and ever-evolving. A lot of the design for the Cafe was done in a quick sketch or through conversations on Slack. I would test while doing customer support. This project was always going on in the background and I was surprised to find that I loved living with a product through its lifecycle. In my previous roles in visual design, that wasn’t an opportunity I typically had. Often, I would create a design and ship it. If we got feedback, it would be year before we could try again. I found that the journey, to live with your work and be able to tweak and test in real time, is an incredibly rewarding and enlightening experience.