As a Senior UX designer at Adventus.io, I worked on a project addressing the underutilisation of the recruiters’ platform Course Search feature. Adventus is a B2B2C SaaS-based marketplace company supporting institutions, recruiters, and international students. The business was scaling up and expanding services to institutions, so the app’s quality as a part of services was vital.
After an internal workshop, I ran concept testing and uncovered a key insight: recruiters still find Adventus’s course search tool indispensable while using various tools from different companies. I created prototypes and ran user testing to understand search behaviours and validate new features. 100% of users loved the features: Like and Compare, Shortlist, Institution and Map View. This enthusiastic response highlighted the effectiveness of our design improvements.
We’ve created a unique search landing page that allows recruiters to instantly view course results upon registering a student. It also offers convenient filtering and sorting of student-relevant information, comparing courses, shortlisting, and easy application, a feature that sets us apart from the competition.
Our new implementation has encouraged recruiters to add students earlier and sparked a significant increase in the use of the search function in their daily work routine; furthermore, the accurate information from course search listings reduced the admin’s workload. This positive change in user behaviour indicates our platform’s potential for future growth and success, instilling optimism in our stakeholders.
Identifying the business status quo and prerequisite
Adventus is a Melbourne-based start-up company that supports international student recruiters to match institutions in English-speaking countries. It became a scale-up company and was about to expand services to institutions.
Problems we aimed to address:
- Users found the search function to be slow
- Courses were being displayed even when users hadn’t initiated a search
- Courses from the same institution were grouped, leading to a lack of diversity in search results
- Users encountered unusual and irrelevant/unexpected results
- Users were unable to export search results to share with their students
Additionally, users highlighted several limitations in the current search functionality, such as the inability to:
- Filter courses by institution
- Use abbreviations
- Access current and up-to-date information on course intakes and availability
- View commission information
- Compare multiple courses simultaneously
Value proposition and ideation
During the project’s initial phase, I delved into data analysis and conducted workshops with internal team members to understand Adventus.io’s ecosystem and product landscape. These efforts gathered valuable insights from user feedback and internal stakeholders, which helped us identify critical problems related to the Course Search feature.
I invited stakeholders and internal team members, including product managers, a solution architect, and engineers. I let them emphasise the end-users, their jobs to be done, and their pain points. I also created elevate-pitch cards for them to use to develop potential solutions that can help both the business and users.
Discovering underutilisation of the Course Search
I transferred the ideas to low-fidelity prototypes for testing.
Concept tested:
- Empty state with pre-populated categories
- Guided course search with a CTA & usability of search history
- Explore by courses, sub filters & tertiary filters
- Like/compare/shortlist functions & information shown on the listings
- Search with a map view
- Student-grade match (Matching eligible students to promoted courses)
Testing result
Concept testing was mostly successful. The most popular concepts are the “Like,” “Compare,” and “Shortlist” functions, and sharing information with students and their parents received 100% positive feedback.
A fascinating insight is that they already know what they are searching for before even using the search tool. “99% of students already know what field they want to go/study and countries they are in mind.”
We also got the end user’s pain points. Following is what users say:
Time management of counselling
“It is a lot more work than you bargained for. I had 10 students last year, and I found it difficult, and this year, I have more volume.”
Use of Adventus.io
“I don’t use Adventus for counselling.
I don’t list all my students.
I don’t go by filters or match-make process.”
Course search functionality
“Where are you based, and which country are you looking for? Of course, I am based in India.”
Focusing Statements
I reframed the problem statements according to the user’s feedback.
“We believe shortening the search time by providing the most relevant, accurate information at a time will help our counsellors save time and workload and get their jobs done.”
“We believe dynamic filtering and course comparison/shortlisting (including map view) will help our customers communicate with their students more efficiently on our platform. This will encourage an end-to-end counselling experience with us, resulting in Adventus.io’s trust in the market.”
Understanding search behaviours and the information hierarchy
Learning objectives
Using mid-fidelity clickable prototypes, we were seeking to learn the following objectives:
Search behaviours
- Would they start by typing a keyword in the search field or click the “filters” button to see all the filters?
- How would they get back to see the filters again while they are looking at the course search results?
- Do they often perform the same search? Would they use search history tags (add or delete)
Filtering
- Is anything important missing in the secondary filters (other than country, institutions, disciplines, and course info shown)?
- What would they do when they want to see more course information?
New Features
- Do they expect what to see when clicking on Explore Universities?
- Is it easy to select courses and compare?
- What would they do on the compare page?
Findings
Search behaviours
Mixed search behaviours:
-using the search bar for everything,
-Search bar+filtering down,
-using only filters.
Search bar and filters hidden away while focusing on seeing the results (aka. double sticky headers) – all users naturally scroll up and down to use it again.
Some users perform the same search with the same criteria, and some never do it.
Filtering
Country, disciplines, Institutions and levels are the most important filtering criteria.
“Show course info” (as a function to show more/less information on the course cards) scored low in findability.
Some are familiar with using the competitor’s UI.
New features
All users loved Institutions and Map View, as well as the Compare Courses page.
The highest rate in usability and findability:
“Like” feature (button on the course card, favourite/selected courses with heart icon) and “Compare” CTA.
To find detailed university information and its campus locations, “Explore Universities” CTA scored “0” in findability. Users clicked the search bar, “Filters” button, and the institution card in the search results.
High-fidelity Search landing page with a global search bar
Search by abbreviations and relevancy
Search Filtering
Beloved features, Like and Compare, Shortlist
Tailored search by adding a student
Tailored search results with next intakes popover
Advanced search filtering
Filtering by institution
Customisable search report
Select courses to compare
Compare Courses page
Shortlist and add a student
Creating flawless end-to-end pre-application journey
The search landing page lets recruiters instantly view course results upon student registration. It also allows for convenient filtering and sorting of information relevant to students. Our new implementation has encouraged recruiters to add students earlier and sparked a significant increase in the use of the search function in their daily work routine; furthermore, the accurate information from course search listings reduced the admin’s workload. This positive change in user behaviour indicates our platform’s potential for future growth and success, instilling optimism in our stakeholders.
Pre-application flow
Pre-application journey UI
