Note: I’m unable to share original designs for this project due to client confidentiality.
Situation
A national higher education admissions platform provider’s ambition is to leverage data and AI to help students decide on a course they will study. Legacy systems, a non-profit status, and complexity of the topic—courses, course derivatives, course features, the wide range of available institutions, and the need to remain in the role of a neutral advisor—prevented them from achieving this ambition.
Previous discovery identified Salesforce Personalisation and Marketing cloud as viable options but the level of ambiguity and complexity was still high. The team was brought on to prototype an illustrative solution showcasing the art of the possible. Past efforts missed the mark, either focusing too heavily on technology, or not providing the necessary clarity for the client to move forward.
Task
Our task was two-fold:
- to create a non-functional prototype for a single use case where a student might know the broad topic they’re interested in but is not familiar with the intricacies of the subject; and
- to create user journey map that takes the student from initial registration to the final application.
Action
- Conducted desk research to examine existing user research data and Salesforce data architecture discovery.
- Co-facilitated an in-person design thinking workshop. The workshop was split evenly between visioning and ideation to help reach alignment and reduce ambiguity.
- Designed a clickable prototype in Figma leveraging Salesforce features, previous data architecture discovery, and existing qualitative user research to identify user needs and behaviours.
- Leveraged generative AI throughout as a thought partner and to produce fast Figma Make mocks that helped reach alignment quickly.
- Introduced innovative interaction models to explore courses, subjects, and providers to 16-17 years olds and aim them in exploring and discovering new fields of study.
- HECoS codes were used in conjunction with Generative AI to make connections between courses and help students navigate ~40,000 courses from 200+ providers.
- Gamification principles were used to create an engaging onboarding flow for students.
- Salesforce Personalisation engine was leveraged to passively build affinity and certainty scores and to surface content based on them.
- Tag clouds and node diagrams were used to help students navigate subjects and discover associated areas of study (e.g., Biology -> Microbiology or Biology -> Immunology)
Result
The prototype, designed collaboratively with the client, will be evaluated with real students by the client’s user research team early in 2026.
