How can studying abroad be a breeze? EdConnect to the rescue! Your one-stop app for comprehensive abroad education support.
EdConnect aims to bridge the gap by seamlessly connecting students with peers, alumni, and mentors who share their academic interests. This platform not only streamlines the process of securing personalised university and housing recommendations but also fosters profile-based peer networking and facilitates access to professional communities for mentorship. Additionally, EdConnect offers webinars tailored to students’ fields of study, enriching their educational and career journeys with invaluable guidance and insights.
5W’s
Who // Students aiming to study abroad, alumni, mentors, and professionals in relevant fields.
What // A solution facilitating personalised support for students pursuing international education.
When // Throughout students’ journeys of preparing for and studying abroad.
Where // Accessible globally to students interested in studying in various international destinations, but for now, the focus is on Indian students prepping to go abroad.
Why // To assist those in need of guidance for pursuing education abroad
Defining the problem
I asked 30 people including peers, friends, and family who have pursued education abroad about the problems faced before, and after moving out of India.
55% didn’t know how to start networking and on what platforms to do so.
34% found it difficult to get in touch with peers applying for the same course and intake.
56% found the process of finding housing and housemates tedious and confusing.
47% of students prefer to handle their research and applications independently rather than hiring a counselor.
Current Solutions
Before delving into proposing my solution, I scrutinized the top apps addressing similar issues in various domains. For instance, in Yocket, where students face difficulties searching for peers by course names; in Leverage Edu, where there’s a lack of consistency between the website and app features, coupled with unintuitive UI, and no provision for student-alumni engagement; in LinkedIn, where access to alumni networks is limited and users face challenges in standing out; and in ADPList, where functionalities are confined to the design field.
Despite offering some time-saving features, these apps didn’t prioritize a user-centric approach and failed to provide intuitive solutions tailored to their users’ needs within their specific problem spaces.
Understanding existing user journey
Above is a student’s journey map from deciding to search for universities to settling in after moving to the respective country.
Defining user persona
Framework Development
The EdConnect application was built based on the iFAEP framework — Integrated Framework for Abroad Education Planning and includes the following features.
Streamlined access to course details and financial aid
Peer Networking
Engagement with credible alumni and industry experts
User-Centered technology integration
Financial planning assistance
Accommodation search navigation
For each generated requirements, ideas were brainstormed ideas
Proposed Solution
In my solution, I focused on three things: networking for students, simplifying housing and housemate search, and easy access to resources for visa information & scholarship database.
Style Guide
The logo was designed using just line strokes. The idea was to bring together the letter ‘E’ and anything associated with education. I thought of what I could possibly use and realised the most common icon to symbolize education is a book! Hence the logo.
The blues and cyan in the color palette aim to represent elements related to learning, such as knowledge, exploration, and academia. The darker hues of blue, black, and gray denote sophistication and professionalism within the app’s design. The light shades are used for backgrounds or to create a sense of openness and clarity within the app’s interface.
UI Style & Components
The interface features a clean and minimalist design with moderate contrast and rounded edges for cards and CTA’s. It employs line icons for simplicity and consistency. This approach prioritizes clarity and ease of use, ensuring a modern and visually appealing user experience.
Final Design
An alumni section was added to every university page, showing profiles of students similar to the user in terms of course and recent intakes. From here, one can view profiles, chat with alumni, and discover the forums they’re part of to get a sense of what to follow.
University search personalization can be performed with the 'filters' option.
The top section of this page enables users to explore and join various forums and groups based on their interests. For easy reference, it also provides a preview of the number of members in each forum and the creation date, indicating how established the forum is.
The community feature enables activities such as peer matching and alumni connections, primarily based on ‘keyword-search’. This makes it easier to find like-minded individuals. From the search results, users can quickly connect with people whose details are displayed.
When ‘chat’ is clicked on on any of the profile cards displayed under peer networking/alumni connect/mentors, users are redirected to the above screens.
Why do the chat screens look very familiar? 🧐
Well, the answer to that is Jakob’s Law.
Features that allow students who like a particular listing to directly contact the agent or other interested candidates were added. This helps students to quickly connect and collaborate with others, facilitating a more efficient and informed decision-making process.
The profile section has functions like application tracker, checklists, documents, my mentors— which shows a list of mentors you’ve constantly been in touch with.
The hamburger menu includes options where users can explore financial assistance/financial literacy and forex services before flying out of the country, settings — for notifications, permissions, themes, font size, etc., and lastly, help center, which guides the user through any problems faced inside the app. These feature-specific screens are to be worked on, as a further scope of the project.
Filters were also added for student housing search, to tailor to needs of students.
Prototype
Click here to access the Figma prototype.
User Testing
The last step of the User Experience process was to test the fully functional prototype with users and to see if what I was trying to convey through the interface was reaching the end-user or not.
A total of 6 participants: 2 male and 4 female between the ages of 19 and 34 residing in India, USA, and Australia were engaged for this purpose.
Virtually moderated usability testing via screen sharing was conducted, where users were asked to perform specific tasks. Each session lasted 25 minutes per participant, ensuring a thorough evaluation of the prototype’s functionality and user experience.
Question asked for the study included :
What do you expect to gain from using this product?
Was the interface easy to understand?
How do you think this product/application will help?
Do you trust this product?
What is your impression/s (first) on this product/application?
Insights from user testing
A very intuitive app that follows easy onboarding, and neatly designed illustrations.
I loved the concept and whole ideation process behind the project and it will also help me achieve my purpose of using the app.
The UI is clean and catchy and instructions are well defined.Keyword-search feature app is so apt for this application.
This definitely looks like a one-stop application for anyone looking to study abroad!
Conclusion
As I played dual roles as a UX researcher & UX Designer for this project, I learned that truly understanding users' pain points is crucial for crafting effective and relevant solutions. This process emphasizes the importance of empathy-driven insights, ensuring designs align with real needs.
Continuous testing and iteration are essential to refine solutions, while collaborating with stakeholders and cross-functional teams ensures seamless transitions from research to design.
User testing is key to validating ideas and improving usability, and clear communication of research findings helps keep user needs at the forefront of decision-making. Most importantly, accessibility and inclusion must be prioritized to create intuitive and effective experiences for all users. These principles are at the heart of a successful, user-centered approach to UX design.
