Problem Statement

During my internship, I took charge of a project to design a web portal for university admissions. This portal is where applicants can easily create and track their applications, handle payments, and complete assessments. It was a crucial task that required combining creativity and practical thinking to make the university admission process smoother and user-friendly.

Objectives

In pursuit of enhancing the university admission portal, my key objectives were to design a user-friendly interface that simplifies the application process for prospective students. This involves creating intuitive features for application creation, tracking, and managing payments. Additionally, I aimed to establish a seamless and efficient platform for students to submit and manage assessments. These objectives collectively contribute to streamlining the entire admission journey, ensuring a positive and accessible experience for applicants.

Key Features to be implemented in the Web Portal:

• Create Applicant Account: Enable a straightforward account creation process for applicants

• View Course Openings and Details: Provide a comprehensive overview of available courses with relevant details

• Register for a Course: Facilitate a user-friendly course registration process

• Track Application: Implement a real-time tracking system for applicants to monitor the status of their applications

• Make Payments for Application: Seamless integration for secure and efficient payment transactions

• Undergo Online assessments and Interviews: Establish a platform for the submission of assessments and participation in online interviews, contributing to a holistic and interactive admission process

Research

To initiate the project, I will need to firstly look, analyze, and understand the given Product Requirement Document (PRD). My approach when initializing a project will be to lay out everything in FigJam since this allows me to have an overview display of the entire project. I will then separate each functionality based on its features and usage. By having everything annotated on FigJam, I can easily scanned through all the information.

After understanding what the client wants and expects, I will then proceed to the process of creating the user flow and user journey. It is best to include every possible scenario such as errors and unexpected actions from the user. However, a best-case user flow is sufficient enough to give a rough idea on how the system will work.

Once the initial user flow has been created, extensive research on the user flow will be go through with having additional information from the requirement as well as other external sources such as the existing portal and from competitor. The aim is to unfold possible solutions that can be implemented in the system.

Since there are many options for applicant to apply from, this simplified user flow is the product after numerous iterations that finds the common patterns of the user flow. Thus, by having a general flow, the user flow has become more intuitive and user-friendly.

This is a diagram that displays the status of the application progress in various stages of the application process. This is done in order to give user the information of the current application status for them to easily know the progress.

This is all the diagram that has been used to create the web portal. The design process for this is not straightforward since the requirement from the client is not clear enough and to address this issue, we need to go back and forth to confirm if the proposed solution is feasible or not. This process takes the most amount of time due to the number of iterations to make sure that the user flow is clear and understandable by the users.

Once the user flow has been finalized, we can proceed to sketching the wireframe that includes all the necessary screens. The components are also being placed into the sketch to ease the actual design process.

Final Design

After numerous iterations, we have landed on this final design that not only following the design system that Pandai already has but also makes sure that the user experience provides a clear, simple, and straight-forward to ease the application process for the applicant.

This is the first access point for users to start their application process. It prompts them to create an account first containing all the necessary pieces of information.

Once they have successfully created an account, it will bring the applicant to the type of entrance list that is currently available for applying since the university has the option to apply using various methods such as using report cards, assessments, certificates, and scholarships.

After selecting the preferred type of entrance, the applicant will need to choose their preferred course in which they are able to choose up to 3 courses and sort them based on their preference.

Then, the user will need to do assessments that the university will grade to see if the applicant will be accepted or not.

This is the payment process for the application to the course.

Once the applicant has successfully paid for the application fee, they will have to fill in the important documents. Along the way the progress bar has been placed to display the current progress and the upcoming task to inform the applicant beforehand.

This is the dashboard that can be access if the user has left/exited the ongoing process. Since we have taken into account all the possible actions the user will take, we have provided a page in which the user can get back to continue and resume their application process through this dashboard. It also displays all the action history and a quick access to where they have left off.

This is the modal where the applicant can see all the history for their applicant process including payment.

Lastly, the application history is being implemented to document all the things that the application has done whether it is successful or unsuccessful. This allows the applicant to keep track of their progress throughout the application process from start to finish.

Remarks

This project has taught me the importance of designing for the users especially in this case for the applicant. This is an important factor since the goal is to provide the applicant with a seamless application process for them to apply to university courses. Since this is my first big and real-life project, it has exposed me to what designing for the industry is for like with multiple stakeholders also participated in the project including the clients, developers, project managers, and fellow developers. It gave me a valuable experience that I could not have otherwise by involving in this project. Although there are some hiccups throughout the project such as the absence of the project manager, the never-ending changing of the PRD as well tight deadlines, and communication issues between stakeholders. These problems are resolved by way of communicating clearly with all parties to not cause confusion and a clear focus on what the project has to become. We are able to successfully complete the project by working together in a controlled environment in which it resulted in a product whereby a wide audience could appreciate.