Plan with Purpose

• Conducted UX research across five trust-and-usability pillars, drawing on NNGroup and Baymard Institute benchmarks

• Identified friction points in how international students understood application requirements and next steps

• Mapped the end-to-end student pathway (U.S. and Canada) to surface where guidance broke down

• Built personas and journey maps to ground design decisions in real user pain points and goals

• Determined the core problem: users needed a clearer, more guided path from "researching options" to "taking action"

Explore Ideas

• Developed a sitemap and information architecture to organize services and content around user intent

• Designed lo-fi wireframes for quiz and onboarding flows, including branching logic based on user responses

• Prioritized key actions (starting the quiz, finding next steps) to reduce decision fatigue

• Explored navigation structures that made complex information easier to scan and act on

• Balanced clarity and guidance with a clean, trustworthy visual tone appropriate for a student audience

Adapt as Needed

• Refined wireframes into high-fidelity mockups through iterative feedback with the team

• Built a UI component guide (nav bar specs, interactive states, Figma-ready documentation) to keep the design system consistent and scalable

• Evaluated accessibility considerations across flows to reduce barriers for a diverse, global user base

• Adjusted the onboarding and quiz logic based on where users were likely to drop off or get confused

• Continuously tested design decisions against the research findings from the discovery phase

Deliver with Confidence

• Delivered a complete design system, sitemap, and high-fidelity mockups ready for handoff

• Produced a client-facing presentation translating research insights, personas, and design rationale into a clear narrative

• Created a scalable UI component library to support future development

• Strengthened the platform's ability to guide international students from confusion to a clear next step

• Served as strong evidence of end-to-end, research-driven design thinking for portfolio and interview conversations