Team
1 Engineers
4 Product designers
2 Content designers
My role
Product designer
User researcher
Content designer
Timeline
12 weeks
❒ Problem
1 student advisor 🆚 hundreds of prospective students
The growing popularity of the Communication Leadership (Comm Lead) program has led to a surge in graduate applications. The traditional email response method by advisors is now drowning the Student Advisor, as manual replies with identical content are inefficient. Prospective Students, who I was in this position, seek a more comprehensive understanding of the Comm Lead program during the application process. There’s a rising expectation for accurate and fast responses, emphasizing the need for an improved communication system that meets the evolving demands of both applicants and the advisor.
❒ Goal
Transitioning from manual email answering overload questions to efficient communication
Initial solution 1
In a brainstorming session, we explored using Mailchimp for email automation to save advisors’ time. However, this could still be time-consuming for students writing emails and challenging to manage for advisors due to complex automation triggers.
Initial solution 2
Automated response mechanism + Staying at CommLead website = Chatbot
Initial solution 3
We also considered redesigning the website’s information architecture to include search and filtering features. However, keeping the content updated remains a challenge for student advisors.
Research
❒ Research - understand student advisor
Conducted user interview with advisor, learned their workflow, and aligned with the expectations of a chatbot
FAQs are primarily text-based
We avoid complex interactions like embedded too much multimedia, focusing instead on straightforward information delivery.
Budget friendly
Due to budget constraints, hiring an engineer to build from 0 to 1 is not feasible. Therefore, we need to conduct research on third-party chatbot plugins available in the market.
Easy to operate and data report
This finding helps us narrow down the scope of third-party plugins. Ideally, maintenance should be straightforward, requiring advisors to only update text.
❒ Research - competitive analysis
Tidio wins among 5 chatbot solutions
❒ Research - understand students
Google Analytics shows that 32% of students are international, and they frequently click 'make an appointment' on the website.
Consider two student personas
Provide a "make an appointment" entry point
Through an online survey, we collected the FAQs that prospective students are most interested in.
1
Admission
2
Financial
3
Degree
4
Career
We tried to categorize the FAQs received from students into the four categories provided by the student advisor, but found that these categories didn’t include information about the program itself, such as events and campus life. Therefore, after discussing with the advisor, I decided to add an 'Events' category.
5
Event
Design process
❒ Design decision #1
Should students start by choosing whether they are international or domestic?
Pros
Facilitates our advisor to subsequently conduct data analysis separately for the two categories of students.
Allows international students to find answers more quickly and directly, such as regarding visas and related issues.
Cons
Initially treating them differently can make students, especially international students, lose a certain sense of belonging.
Both FAQ categories of students have a large overlap, so it’s unnecessary to add an extra step by separating them.
Users no longer need to select the type of student they belong to; questions specific to “international students” are integrated into the subdivided categories, making the entire Information Architecture (IA) and user flow more streamlined and consistent.
❒ Design decision #2
Students' preference of booking meetings 🆚 The advisor doesn't want to answer questions can be found on the website on the meeting
❒ Design decision #3
Text-based conversation needs joy and character too
Final design
❒ Style guide
❒ Tidio backend flow charts and operation handbook
Reflection
When the product service targets more than one type of user, and these target users differ significantly, such as students and advisors in a chatbot, it's crucial to clearly define the persona for each type of user and strive to balance their user goals.
This is my first time balancing business goals in design, such as budget, acquiring user behavior data, etc. From this experience, I learned the importance of conducting comprehensive competitor research and interviewing stakeholders to understand their objectives.
To reduce development costs and time, it's essential to flexibly use low-code platforms and third-party plugins. Perhaps in the era of AIGC, everyone can be both a developer and a designer.