Case study—Application form overhaul
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Case study—Application form overhaul

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Case study—York University Application Form

York University

Case study—York University Application Form

My role

As the primary designer and researcher for this project, my tasks included conducting interviews, synthesizing research, and creating research artifacts like the customer journey map. Design work included creating wireframes and prototypes which were later validated with users.

York university application project timeline
project timeline showing kickoff and design milestones such as user research, wireframes, testing, design and launch.

Process

Stakeholder interviews helped us to identify the target audience for the form. The primary user was a mature student—they had graduated from high school at least 2 years ago. Staff conveyed the many difficulties students were having with the application process, leading to a high volume of support calls to the Student Services Office. We also interviewed recent applicants to identify pain points with the existing application process. The main difficulties with the form were the volume of jargon, the unwieldy length, the errors from text formatting issues and that the form did not work on mobile.

York U Customer Journey thumbnail

View the Customer Journey Map for applying to York U.

  • Wireframe for application form to York u

    HTML wireframes for the form prototype. Colour coded alert boxes give users additional information and indicate the info, warning, success and failure states. Tooltips were added to help to clarify the field requirements. Field groups were added to improve accessibility and comprehension of the form.

  • Wireframe for application to York U

    The very long form was broken up into a multi-step process with a progress bar to guide users through to the end.

  • Wireframe for application to York U

    Field group titles and headings help to provide context for the questions.

  • Wireframe for application to York U

    Custom warning messages appear in context near fields where errors commonly occur.

  • Wireframe for application to York U

    Some fields only appear contextually, based on answers on previous questions. This helped to keep the form as lean as possible.

  • In-line field validation provides contextual error messages that prompt the use to correct errors in the form.

A cross-functional in-house team worked together over the course of 8 months to design, prototype and develop four versions of the form for graduate, undergraduate and french speaking applicants. User research, usability best practices and accessibility rules informed the development of the wireframes and prototypes.

Working with the existing infrastructure meant that there were technological limitations of the IT stack. We had to work within those limitations to create the form.

Isometric view of yorku application on an iphone
‘I like this form. It's simple and elegant and fast. Thanks.’
‘It is so simple, nice and easy to complete.’

 —Student feedback from the post-launch survey

Outcomes

From user testing we learned of several usability issues that we were able to fix before the launch.

The resulting application form was newly accessible and mobile friendly, and had a much improved user experience.

Feedback from students and stakeholders was positive.

Animated screenshot showing the different screens of the York University application form

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