Funnel Enrolments
As Funnel software gained popularity among schools, the company decided to merge it with their existing product Enrol, to create a streamlined end-to-end enrolment system. While Enrol looked after the customer-facing aspects of the enrolments process, Funnel focused on the back-end — maintaining a database of prospective students and families, and nudging them through the school’s pipeline towards enrolment.
As Digistorm's in-house product designer, my role was to design Funnel's new customer-facing enrolment form and collaborate with the development team to improve the system from both user and business perspectives. We began by analysing our current solution, identifying areas for improvement and gathering feedback from schools to understand their pain points while gaining a deep understanding of our customers' needs and key business goals to create a new experience that is simple, intuitive, and seamless for parents and guardians, while enabling schools to capture data and build relationships with prospective families.
I began crafting the initial wireframes, outlining the core pages and user flow based on our initial analysis. The existing solution had several issues, leading to a confusing process for returning applicants. I proposed a new interface that was visually clean, with key information for parents such as the estimated time to complete, required documents, and support information consistently across all pages and a better form user experience.
After iterating and testing the wireframes, I proceeded to convert them into high-fidelity prototypes. To ensure they would function in a real-world scenario, we selected a small group of existing clients to evaluate the proposed designs using their school branding. Gathering feedback and validating our assumptions before a wider release was crucial. Testing the system with real users and school logos in a soft launch allowed us to understand and address their needs, enhancing customer satisfaction and providing the best experience for applicants.
During the initial release, we learned that although the new version provided an improved experience, the proposed solution lacked the personalisation our customers expected. The ability to upload custom backgrounds on the landing page was a key selling point that also helped differentiate multiple forms from the same organisation and distinguish schools from their competitors. Recognising this, we immediately shifted priorities to include image upload and custom background settings to meet our customers' expectations.
The previous solution was an open form, allowing anyone to start an application, which increased the enrolment staff workload with the task of moderating and cleaning up spammed applications. To address this issue, significant changes were implemented in the new Enrolment form, with a primary focus on enhancing security for both new and ongoing applications. As a team, we defined the user flow for both new and returning users, introducing additional layers of security to ensure immediate and accurate identification of the applicants while generating strong leads.
The end result not only addressed major issues from both systems such as poor user experience and security concerns, it also provided schools with an improved and more visually engaging enrolment application form to simplify the process for parents and increase confidence in their decision. The upgraded system combined the best parts of both products to help schools manage their enrolments process from beginning to end, all within one application while offering families a better user experience.
As a key deliverable on this project, I also designed an automated Sketch file (that turned into a Figma file in 2022) for the design team efficiently and easily generate and export assets. This became an important step to visually enhance enrolment forms and ensure the designs met accessibility standards. Using this tool on a daily basis allowed the design team to be more agile and provide high-quality custom designs to all schools.
