How We Solve Scholarship Applicants’ Problem with Nikola
In Indonesia, there are a lot of scholarship providers for higher education with many purposes and benefits from undergraduate until doctoral program such as LPDP, Erasmus Mundus, Djarum Beasiswa Plus, Tanoto Foundation, Holland Scholarship, Taiwan Tech, etc. I also had have been applied one or two of ‘em.
So, we proposed an idea to gather all scholarship information into one mobile app called Nikola. The idea came from one of team members, that was on his way to pursue a graduate program through scholarship. He thought there was a problem to find a complete scholarship information. Some of scholarship information was hard to find even on their official website, and sometimes it was placed on hidden location.
Nikola is trying to solve the scholarship applicant’s problem. Nikola provides you with the latest scholarship that still available to apply with complete information. Nikola also provides you with registration date reminder and document checklist that will help you to apply scholarship right on time and well organized, and it makes apart from its competitor.
Nikola will always try to improve the product. In the future, we will engage to scholarship provider to make an improvement for our app can solve more problems that scholarship applicants have.
Let Me Spill the Tea
A good design is not always have a good UX. But, a good UX is usually accompanied by a good design. For me, a good design is something that can solve problems. To know it is solved or not, you have to understand the experience that your user gets and feels.
In Nikola, we used Design Sprint to develop the idea and it was worked together with Scrum to develop the app. Maybe it won’t worked with exactly step in Design Sprint, with a little combination from User-centered Design methods. Please, enjoy our story :)
Understand and Define — Problems and Solutions
Define the problem and the solution. In my case, we already know that there are some problems in education specifically in scholarship information. I need to elaborate the problems into several items to make sure that the problems does really exist or just a false thought. I act myself as a applicants that try to find some scholarship information on their official website. And yes, some of them are hard to find the information because its placed on the sub-sub-menu not in the home menu or headline.
How about the competitors?
We had done research analysis for competitors. Most of them didn’t have features that we proposed. If it does exist, the competitor put those features for paid users. And also, in local market app in Indonesia there is not yet available for app that we proposed, they only show the scholarship list and that’s it. So, we think that we might be the pioneer in local market app.
I conduct a mini-user research to delve up more specific problems. Because, I think if it just provide a list of scholarship, what our difference with Google or another scholarship app. I interview a few of my fellow university student friends whose really enthusiastic to apply scholarship for their continuous study. From them, I’ve got new insights about applicants problem.
See? By reaching out the user we can understand what they really need.
All the problems that users told me in the interview are mapped into user journey. By using this user journey’s map, I can choose which are the the top priorities that need to solve problem into MVP version or the priorities for next development. It can see through their feeling/emotion and pain points, which process to apply a scholarship that feel painful for them. This map also can help me to explain to the team which features that we should build first.
Not all the concerns we put on the MVP. Only the urgent problems that we prioritized. So here’s the (rough) MVP flow.
Based on the user journey, for Nikola’s MVP, we decided to execute the first 3-phases of the journey. I distinguish the set of priorities into 2 personas, that can help the team to imagine our real users.
For some reason, user research is unnecessary in the beginning. Some designers often just using their assumption to describe what is the problem and — the most dangerous part of all — who is the user. It is a safe way to shorten the time and money, also to make sure the product development is rapid.
But for me, if I can’t really imagine what the real problems is, I prefer do some mini-user research to define the real problems. And I did it outside the sprint, maybe one week before the sprint started. It also helps a team to determine what features that should put on the MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
Diverge and Decide — Being A Pioneer
As we know there is no competitor for this kind of app, we can drive it with a simple feature just for demo and product introduction (based on user research) to gain our brand, and of course we should put on the next schedule for the update. We sum up the crazy- 8’s into a low fidelity mockup, to make it more easy to group and to ease other member to take a look.
User is the main priority, then the business value. As a product digital designer, you should understand both of the user and business value in the same portion. Yes, we are designing and creating product for user, but always remember that we also sell our product in form services or features.
Through user flow, we can communicate to product manager (PM) and developers. User flow describes the product flow that deliver the services or features, usually in form flowchart. Beside for product development documentation, by using user flow we can determine on what point that should put monetize on, or just show a gimmick to attract new user/early adopter. User flow can help me to imagine every state that may occur when user used it, and it can drive me to sketch a wireframe or low-fidelity mockup.
Overall, in this stage we should determine product flow in detail. Put the details on it, even for a pop-up action how long it should be shown. Make sure that PM and developers understand the flow, so they can take into account the difficulty and duration of the development process.
Prototypes—Appearance does Matters
In this stage, we are concluding all into a visual solution. Color composition, typography, and assets appearance are blending to make a good design. Most of all on this stage is handled by UI Designer, and as UX Designer we are act as design director to make sure all the designs are delivering based on product flow. It can be said, I handle 30% of the design and the rest 70% is handled by my partner as a UI Designer. UID and UXD should have an ability to bring all what user’s need and like into their head, you can act as a user and think did you like the design (color, composition, typography, etc) or not.
UID and UXD must have a sense of design and aesthetic. When people like the design they gonna use it and if it’s not they gonna leave it. As a product designer, we are the frontman of the product, because the first glance is come form its appearance.
Validate — Knowing the Truth
We think, it is good enough. But, how about people’s (user) feel and think about it? What will they feel when use it, are they good to understand and love it or the otherwise? We need to validate the design of our product, to make sure that we are delivering a good and necessary thing for them.
I conduct a simple usability testing to know how user anticipate this kind of user interface and what they think about overall app flow and design. I contact a few final year student from my campus to join the testing and I got 5 participants.
It can be said that, in overall, they can understand Nikola App flow. There are some of them that don’t really understand a certain step based on the app design, and it’s totally fine. The app’s language may have make them fell confused, because usually they use application or software in English. Some participants also give critics about the user interface, its design and colors, some of them say it’s good and the other said it’s could’ve been improved. Maybe our design on this first iteration isn’t really good-looking and sophisticated. Additionally, it’s confusing for user. But it’s okay. Design process is a cycle, it’s normal to always update the design based on validated results.
We update!
Based on usability testing results, we decided to fix and update Nikola app design into a pretty big renewal. Also we are refreshing the team composition and it ends up with I am the only product designer in the team. So, I think Nikola should have a new face, with new logo, new color composition, new design, and yes all by myself.
Nikola will be released to Play Store and App Store soon! You can look up Nikola on our official website here. I will give the update for the launch.
Thanks!
