Case Study: Common App

How do you reimagine a challenging experience?

The Challenge

Each year, more than one million students rely on the Common App to apply to college. But the site was difficult to navigate and even harder to understand, so we had to transform it into a truly supportive resource.

Markets & Services

USER NEEDS

Light the path

The redesign put our client in a stronger position to meet the needs of both students who are applying to college, as well as students who are or should be in the exploratory stages of considering post-secondary education. By providing the resources and guidance these audiences need, we helped to drive applications.

GUIDED EXPERIENCE

Create content for every step

Through in-depth research and interviews with college admission experts, our content team transformed the site into a student's virtual journey. Starting with middle school and continuing through senior year, we wrote a step-by-step guide to help students and parents prepare for college. These steps include guidance on why to consider college and how to pay for it.

INTUITIVE FUNCTIONALITY

Smart search

The core mission of this site is to help high school students easily discover and apply to colleges that are right for them. So functionality needed to be intuitive and exceptionally user friendly. Our research led to a visually captivating site that enables students to search based on the college criteria they want with the accessibility and ease-of-use they need.

USER JOURNEY

Make it easy on your users

In the past, students had to fill out their application first, before understanding the process and their options. Aside from causing anxiety, this led to a frustrating user experience. Students were forced to access the application before knowing which materials and information they would need. Our redesign changed that. With the goal of easing stress and guiding the experience, our team developed a "How To Apply" user journey, complete with a comprehensive application dictionary.

REACH

Expand your audiences

Students aren't the only ones who visit the Common App website. And yet, critical audiences like parents and school counselors were not represented. We created audience-specific sections and reorganized its essential resources, so everyone can rely on the new site for guidance and support.

USABILITY TESTING

Student tested, parent approved

To ensure that the new website would resonate with target users, we conducted a series of usability testing sessions with high school students and parents from across the U.S. The results speak for themselves.

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