College Board
Overview
High school students trust the College Board’s College Search because of their accurate data. The product was out-of-date and needed a complete redesign.
Role
Content design, information architecture, UX research
Challenges
How do we make the large amount of college information easy to scan and understand?
What filter labels and organization will users understand when many aren’t familiar with all the options?
How do we encourage users to authenticate or create an account?
Cards
The results cards display the most important information to users, which center around the questions:
Can I get in?
How much does it cost?
Would I like the campus culture?
In collaboration with UX research and long-term outcomes research, I chose to highlight data users readily are looking for (e.g., average SAT score) , as well as information that is important to know but users often don’t consider (e.g., graduation rate).
Filters
Students often don’t understand all the varieties of colleges and how they can affect their college experience.
It was important to include descriptions for the filters to provide context and direction that can’t be communicated by headers alone.
Filter Pills
For the initial release of this feature, the category labels are always displayed in the pills. Applied filters are fully displayed if there is only one option selected within the category. If more than one filter is applied, then the number of applied filters is displayed instead. This approach reduces clutter when needed, and optimizes for transparency when appropriate.
College List
Users can keep track of their progress by saving colleges to their college list which encourages users to authenticate. Creating an account is an involved process, so we present the value of authentication upfront by allowing users to add colleges to their list unauthenticated. In order to save the list, they need to log in.
When unauthenticated, the primary CTA leads to the log in/account creation flow.