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A B2B SaaS platform to ace college accreditations
Studium's product is my first real life project which I worked on after I started at Studium as an intern in March 2023 & then as a full-time UI/UX Designer in July 2023. Details of this project are not disclosed here or in any other part of my portfolio since this project constitutes of company IP.
Problem Statement:
Colleges and faculty face significant challenges in obtaining accreditation due to the complex and time-consuming nature of the process. Managing extensive documentation, ensuring compliance with stringent standards, and co-ordinating across multiple departments creates a daunting task. This often leads to inefficiencies, stress, and delays, making it difficult for institutions to achieve and maintain a decent accreditation status.
User:
Age: 30-60
Occupation: Professor at a college
Location: Pune, India
Persona: Sandeep is an Associate Professor at a tier-II Management college in Pune. His college is going to apply for the NAAC accreditation in the next academic year. Neither Sandeep nor college management have much idea as to how to navigate the maze of accreditations. Getting a bad NAAC grade will hamper college admissions & grants received by the college. Sandeep is fed up of doing documentation for NAAC as his passion is teaching and he sees accreditation work as an additional burden on his head. The college needs a platform to guide them & manage all of their accreditation work in a centralized manner.
Challenges:
1. College management has little to no knowledge of how to perform well at accreditations.
2. Accreditation compliance is highly technical making it time consuming & hard to understand.
3. Faculty members are reluctant in doing tasks related to accreditation documentation because they see it as a burden & it is hard to understand.
4. Accreditations function at multiple levels like programs, institutes, universities making it much harder to manage all work in a centralized manner.
5. The average user being the age of 45, we needed to consider that users were not particularly tech savvy & needed to simplify the product as much as possible.
Objectives:
1. Using this product, the faculty need not study tedious accreditation documentation.
2. Faculty should be able to fill up required data quickly in relevant accreditation criteria.
3. College management should be able to see at any point, the status of work completed by faculty members & all other concerned stakeholders.
4. Insights should guide management in areas of improvement where they should be focusing more in order to get more marks.
5. Management should be able to access accreditation criteria at multiple levels in the hierarchy like university, institute, program depending on the accreditation.
6. Finals reports should be generated automatically using all the data input.
7. College should be able to show improvements in various areas over multiple accreditation cycles.
8. Providing surrounding modules that aid & expedite the process is a big plus.
Solution:
An accreditation management software which centralizes management of all data. Provides insights to the college management on work being done, provides a birds eye view. Insights make visible potential areas of improvement. It also eases the burden by guiding faculties on which data is required at what stage. All the data is compiled in a standard format & your final report is printed.
Design Process:
1. Initial Research: Designing for accreditation & related modules is a highly domain heavy task. Thus, the research phase of this process includes not only the end users, but other surrounding stakeholders as well. When designing a new module, research is conducted in collaboration with potential users (faculty & college management) as well as domain experts.
2. Wireframes: Based on the initial research the entire flow of the module is created in wireframes, which go through internal approvals for design. First paper wireframes & then mid fidelity wireframes in Figma are created.
3. Design & Prototype: Wireframes are then made into full-fledged flows of finished designs along with prototyping. Prototyping also helps the internal developers team understand the flow better, resulting in their job getting easier.
5. Testing & Iterating: Designed modules are then made into functional previews by developers, which can be tested for design & functionality without releasing the module. At this stage designers collaborate with developers as well as customer success team to test the modules. For user testing, the module is released to a small sample of users and feedback is gathered.
7. Push to prod: Feedback from user testing & internal testing is incorporated and the final version is then pushed to prod & released for all users.
Learning:
Working on Studium's accreditation product gave me exposure to the design processes followed in real life projects. I especially enjoyed the enterprise nature of the product making it more interesting for me. Being a startup, one wears multiple hats at Studium. Similarly I got the opportunity to learn-
1. Design- Worked on the entire flow of designing software modules from scratch. Contributed to a revamp of the existing design system at the organisation. Conducted upskilling sessions on Advanced Figma for my team.
2. Research- Using ChatGPT, initiated a project to enhance operational processes in the company. Created a custom GPT based on NAAC accreditation documentation to help with internal research.
3. Admin- Worked on administrative tasks like Leave Management (Zoho People), Support Ticketing (Zoho Desk), Google Workspace & Google Business Profile. Conducted a hiring drive for a Statistics role from start to end. Also had the occasional opportunity to manage company events and interview thought leaders in the education space.
4. Analysis of data- Worked on gathering and processing large amounts of institute data from multiple accreditation bodies. This data was mainly used to generate insights and to create comparative analytical reports.
5. Social Media- Designed social media posts, videos, executed a social media calendar & grew LinkedIn followers from 1,000 to 2,500. Was tasked with creating blogs and publishing them on the website through CMS. Worked with a social media agency to setup weekly Email campaigns as a part of Email marketing.
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