UX Research | UX Design | Web Design
Spark! Central Application Portal
TYPE OF ENGAGEMENT.
Team Project, Client Project
Jan. 2022 — May. 2022
SKILLS & TOOLS.
Design Lead, UX Designer
Miro, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe XD
CLIENT INTRODUCTION.
BU Spark! is a technology incubator and experiential learning lab for computer science and engineering projects. The program allow student from computer science, engineering, graphic design and jounalism majors to collaborate together for develop computational and data driven project at Boston University. BU Spark! aims to help students realize their potential by providing access to resources, knowledge, and expert networks to support their innovation journeys.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION.
The BU Spark! program has experienced significant growth in recent years, resulting in a surge of student applications.
This project is to develop an online application platform that will enhance the future recruiting process for student and administrators. In addition to streamlining operations, we aim to integrate the existing design guidelines of BU Spark! while also cultivating a more robust and cohesive brand identity for the program as a whole.
TEAM.
SWE: Cici Chen, Jane Feng, Rishab Nayak, Shahaf Dan
Lead: Rishab Nayak (Tech), Duo Xu (Design)
UX Design: Duo Xu, Andy Vo, Joanna Jung
IMPACT.
Since April 2022, the platform has been put into use at Boston University, which already served 200+ users. From the validation testing and survey, 93% of administrative users and students think the portal makes their admission process more efficient.
Live Site: https://buspark.app
DESIGN PROCESS.
PROBLEM & CHALLENGES.
The BU Spark! program has experienced significant growth in recent years, resulting in a surge of student applications.
The existing recruiting process relies on a lengthy Google form, presenting several interconnected challenges that cause complexity and inconvenience of the recruiting process for students and administrators. Current, recruiting tool lack of a mechanism to save past applications, so student have to fill and submit the form each year. Administrators struggle to efficiently filter and identify ideal candidates; and interview scheduling is overly complex.Students and Administrators also experience the hardship to track on the application status, which lead to the challenge in interview scheduling.
User feedback highlights significant issues, with 79% of applicants finding the process overly time-consuming, 14% losing track of their applications, and instances of missed interviews by both students and administrators.
How might reduce time-consuming tasks and mitigate the risk of missed interviews for both students and administrators?
USER RESEARCH.
To validate our, we interviewed 8 student at Boston University from different majors and 5 administrators of the BU Spark! program to learn about their experiences and challenges during the recruiting process to help us identify our opportunity space and project goal.
OUR GOALS.
Based on our in-depth user research and feedback analysis, we have identified three primary goals that our solution must fulfill
1
Simplify application process for student to avoid repetitive form submissions each year
Improve recruitment process by including efficient candidate filtering and automate interview scheduling option
Provide status tracking updates and notification for both students and admins, to reduce instances of missed interviews
2
3
BRAND GUIDE.
We organized and designed the brand guide for the portal based on the logo and color guide of BU Spark! program.
HI-FI PROTOTYPE.
KEY FEATURE DEMO.
Sign in & Sign up
This Section is separated into two views, one is for admission and the other one is for students. Users will sign in through their Boston University's email account which will ensure the information safety inside the platform.
Admins’s View
The Admins' View include a set of filter that allows the users to search for applicants based on skills, school year, program, position and etc. The application portal also provides admins the option to contact applicants through one click (email icon), and leave notes for applicants during interview.
The programs pages includes application templates, users are able to edit existing programs’ application forms and add new programs in this section.
Student Dashboard and Profile
A notification function inside the home page, which help student to get to know the latest position openings and their application status.
For first time user, we encourage students to fill out their profile page, which will be stored inside our platform and public to the admins. The application portal allows students to re-edit their profile page later, but no need to re-submit it each year.
Student Application Form
Since student already enter their basic information inside profile, the portal simplify and reduces the length of the application process. Inside the form, students able to view their progress, save half done applications, and edit their previous submissions.
