“I want to go to college but don’t even know where to begin”:
Improving Microcopy to Reduce Confusion
The Context.
Enrolling in college isn’t straightforward, especially for first-generation college students. Application for enrollment is different than enrolling in classes and federal aid forms are different than scholarship forms. It’s a lot to navigate and inconsistent content hierarchy, titles, and labels create even more confusion which can dissuade a prospective student. Application numbers were down even though scholarship funds were at an all-time high; over 250k was not awarded to students because of a lack of applications.
The Opportunity.
I regularly volunteer to advise and mentor prospective college students from minoritized communities, specifically to help them negotiate academic jargon. One week two separate people got frustrated when trying to apply to a new mentoring and scholarship program for BIPOC students.
My Role.
I analyzed the user journey and flow of the webpage to identify pain points or critical errors that prevented prospective students from seamlessly enrolling.
Two Significant Insights.
After analysis, I discovered three versions of an apply call to action button on one page, all referring to different applications.
Testing with a cognitive walkthrough method revealed another source of confusion: only a portion of the user journey is represented and without knowing that they have to begin the enrollment process on another website, the student cannot apply for this mentoring and scholarship program.