✺ A mobile app that prepares low-income students for college.

Unimi is a mobile app solution that equips low-income high school and middle students with college readiness tools. Our team worked closely with Cal Poly’s Associate Chair of Ethnic Studies, Dr. José Navarro, and received funding to move forward.

TEAM

Shandeigh Palabrica, Marissa Thai, Kristy Leung, Kathy Lou, Zara Iqbal, Lexi Berryhill, Emily Flores, Leticia Mezzetti, Analisa Viloria

TIMELINE

12 weeks

SOFTWARE

Figma, FigJam, Illustrator, Coda

ROLE

UXR, UX Design

✺ INITIAL PROBLEM DISCOVERY

Getting into college is hardddd!!!

The link between parental income and college-going has increased in recent decades. Studies show students’ college readiness journeys are thwarted by guidance counselor implicit bias, indigestible college websites, and lack of Gen Z mobile solutions.

✺ UXR

We asked…Can we create a college readiness resource for low-income students that makes college accessible for everyone?

We scoped out our problem space with user interviews and user surveys. Our key questions —

  • What are your worries with college?

  • What do you use to learn more about college?

  • How prepared do you feel for college?

Of 23 user survey respondents and 18 interviewees, 78.3% said they did not feel prepared for higher education.

Students expressed concerns about paying for college and uncertainty about where to start. We organized our data points into an affinity map and found 3 insights…

01 Lack of personalization

Students don’t know what they want, so they don’t know which resources speak to them.

02 Difficult to understand

Students find pre-existing resources dense and hard to understand.

03 Need for guidance

Students don’t know what they don’t know, so Google searches don’t work.

Out of the above problem statements, we moved forward with…

✺ HMW help users feel like they have input and control over their life after high school?

03 ✺ EARLY SKETCHING

We discussed napkin sketches with engineers.

04 ✺ DECISION MAKING

With input from stakeholders, engineers, and PMs, we converged on four key features.

  1. Personalized onboarding to help students identify their interests

  2. “My Classes” page that tells students what they need to take for college

  3. Search that gives students digestible information about a college of choice

  4. One-on-one mentorship with counselors and college students

05 ✺ MY CONTRIBUTION

I wireframed onboarding, home, and search flows, with 3 key iterations.

I built out three critical flows from low, mid, to hi-fidelity with an 8-point grid, applying weekly input from design reviews. Here are iterations and questions at every point of review.

✺ Allowing students to browse colleges related to their activities

✺ Helping students to track strict college requirements

✺ Guiding students in their search by prioritizing interests over schools

07 ✺ VISUAL DESIGN

We used UXR learnings to decide on key
visual requirements.

During early reviews of our component libraries, we established a few key non-negotiable points for our visual design.

  • Avoid heavy themes of blue/yellow, and other colors that represent certain schools.

  • Use a mascot to guide the student through key features.

  • Establish a visual tag system to associate onboarding choices with mentor qualities.

We presented this initial solution to our key stakeholder, Professor José Navarro.

  • Students can get a tutorial on why higher education matters.

  • Students can understand why higher education matters.

  • Students can select interests to receive a personalized mentor recommendations.

  • Students can learn what different universities are out there.

  • Students can track their eligibility for college applications.

  • Students can receive personalized mentorship from people who’ve been in their shoes.

  • Students can describe themselves so mentors can understand their goals.

LOOKING BACK,

We built trust with our engineers and learned to balance product & engineering.

We learned that bias is everywhere. As college students, our experiences with college readiness began to show themselves in the design process. And sometimes, that derailed focus on the real problem.

We learned to work with constraints. As much as we wanted to pursue our ambitious ideas, we learned to define our project scope and stay rooted to our problem. And that was a blessing in disguise, because we always had to be asking—

At the end of the day, what do low-income students need in order to feel empowered to pursue higher education?

INTERESTED IN A CHAT?

✺ Let’s get in touch :)