Comet - College Applications Startup
A new ChatGPT Tool for college app startup
Role: UX Designer
Tools: Figma, Figjam, Google Suite, Slack
Collaborators: Worked closely with entire product team including CEO, CTO, CS Engineers, and Student Interns. I was the only UX Designer.
The Story:
Comet brought me on to help take their company from Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage to growing intermediate startup stage. They were interested in gaining feedback from users and needed help deciding which of the many possible changes would be the most valuable.
I catalogued the entire Comet product - a dashboard that helps college applicants apply to college (eg. The "TurboTax" of college applications.). I found errors, discontinuity issues, and areas for improvement in the onboarding flow, Major Quiz, and theming. I made a concise list of potential changes with expected ROI to the CTO and CEO based off of my findings.
After interviewing high school aged college applicants, I found that users were most interested in personalized advice on their potential colleges, majors, and college essays. They were also excited and interested in Chat GPT and were interested in an improved experience.
The CEO and CTO were excited about the momentum integrating ChatGPT could give to Comet, so I found a way to solve multiple problems at once with a ChatGPT Integration.
Cue, a ChatGPT robot, solved multiple issues simultaneously of continuity, personalized advice, and major quiz results all in one feature.
Metrics & ROI:
See the existing Comet site with the live improvements (login needed). <link>
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Created a Most Loved Product using "Cue" the robot, who helps students with their college applications in a friendly, accessible way. This increased enjoyment, retaining users and resulting in more essay submissions.
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Identified key insights around what users need and built designs to engage those needs.
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Solved multiple user experience issues in one sleek design, resulting in higher user retention and user engagement.
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Aided company to meet investor goals by implementing a new and exciting feature using ChatGPT API integration.
Comet wanted to cheaply move past Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage - I catalogued each screen and came up with a list of areas that needed to be improved.
When I was brought on as their sole UX designer, I had access to previously built Figma Files and their existing product.
Comet explained that they needed help figuring out how to increase user retention and how to optimize their College Major Quiz. They had asked many high school age interns how to improve the site and had gained insight into many issues across the platform. However Comet was not sure of the best solution to spend money on implementing.
I decided to capture my first reactions in a careful note taking manner and conducted a Task Analysis of what users experience when onboarding. I had concerns about only conducting usability tests with Comet interns, so I decided to take their suggestions with a grain of salt.
I presented my notes in a long document ranked by importance and how they would solve Comet's goals. I then came up with 5 top suggested improvements out of this process.
ROI explanations & Color-Coded importance rankings helped product team decide which changes to implement
Glows & Grows comments helped us focus on what was and wasn't working with existing designs
Recommendation's acted like a first draft of concepts on how to improve identified issues
While Conducting a Comparative Analysis of Turbo Tax, I identified solutions to help engaging users in challenging tasks
Due to the similiarity of TurboTax and Comet's goals - eg. Helping users enjoy challenging, paperwork heavy tasks. (TurboTax with Taxes and Comet with College Applications). I decided to conduct a Comparative Analysis of my tax filing experience. I found usable patterns in how Turbo Tax chunks activities, celebrates with users when completing a chunk and keeps theming consistent. (see gallery below).
Some key solutions included:
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Condense copy on each screen to be more concise to minimize cognitive load and reduce overwhelm in user.
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Celebrate with the user when they complete a small chunk
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Make theming more consistent - we need to find a way to include Cue the robot more often throughout the website and not just during onboarding.
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Include a FAQ pullout to help users understand new terms, bureaucratic lingo, and to give advice on the pro's and con's of different options.
Describe your image
Describe your image
The CEO wanted to pivot to integrate ChatGPT into our solution - but I found that it was only helpful with specific phrasing
Given the popularity of ChatGPT, the executive team was very interesting in integrating an API into Comet. Given this sudden direction change, I had to figure out a way to fuse my research with the possibilities of ChatGPT.
I decided to do some testing of questions that students might need help with when applying for college. I quickly found that the AI responses weren't 100% reliable unless the questions were phrased in a particular way.
To optimize for this reality I needed to design a way to:
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Figure out how to integrate ChatGPT conversations into our product seamlessly with our product across all features.
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Lead users into asking the "right" questions to prevent inaccurate responses
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Make Comet a more lovable product that maximizes efficiency and enjoyability.
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