Connecting women & work
Helping a nonprofit with application abandonment
Client: Non-profit Career Accelerator
Role: Product Designer
Context
In this project, we had the opportunity to improve the application process for a nonprofit organization that connected women with career training and wraparound social supports. The process was a key entry point for users but it had become a major usability roadblock.
Challenge: A confusing intake process led to high abandonment rates, while advisors were stuck in admin work instead of providing meaningful support.
Constraints: We couldn’t access end-users for testing due to recruitment challenges, and development was outsourced to another vendor we could not engage with.
Research & discovery
To uncover pain points and opportunities for improvement across the advisor and applicant journeys, I mapped user flows, flagged drop-off points, and ran heuristic audits. I led card-sorting workshops in FigJam to refine content and stage naming, creating a more seamless, aligned experience.
What we uncovered:
-
Lack of clarity on the next step: Upon registration, applicants were presented with an interface that didn't clearly indicate the next step or what was remaining to complete, resulting in frustration and requests for support made to the applicant advisors.
-
Unclear eligibility: Applicants could progress far before discovering they were ineligible, as criteria weren’t shown early.
-
Inefficient workflows: The workflow was convoluted, and applicants with varying levels of preparedness all went through the same worklfow, meaning some missed opportunitites to apply to programs they were prepared for.
-
Applicant–advisor mismatch: Different workflows and language for applicants and advisors made it hard to track and communicate applicant progress.
Design
To validate my assumptions and ensure I stayed aligned with business and user needs, I used an iterative approach to redesign interfaces and workflows in Figma, holding weekly design reviews to gather feedback. I also worked closely with the Product Owner to turn insights into a prioritized Azure DevOps backlog, contributing user stories and detailed mockups.
Key design decisions:
Highlight eligibility criteria upfront: I moved eligibility checks to earlier in the process to prevent wasted effort and connect ineligible applicants with referrals sooner.
Streamlined workflows: Applicants ready to apply could move forward quickly, while those needing coaching were flagged. Advisor and applicant workflows were also aligned to improve clarity and communication.
At-a-glance status overview: I created a dashboard showing applicants their full progress and clearly highlighting next steps as they moved through each stage.
Mobile optimization: Analytics surfaced a significant mobile user base, so I prioritized a strong mobile experience to ensure full access without a computer.
Outcome
Final Deliverables
-
A design that lent itself to incremental improvements
-
A fully interactive, clickable Figma prototype
-
A set of high-fidelity mock-ups showing key screens and interactions.
-
A refined, prioritized backlog including user stories, design annotations, and mock-ups for future development
Client Impact
Although implementation wasn’t in our scope, the client left with a clear vision of what the application could be and the artifacts they needed to start development. In their feedback, stakeholders emphasized how deeply we seemed to understand their users and how much they appreciated the clarity and depth of the deliverables.
"The team dives in to learn the organization as best they can in a very quick manner, asks thoughtful questions to gain insight and have an ability to immerse themselves in what is happening to make suggestions that are meaningful."
Applicant Advisor
"The compassion with which the team approached our work showed me they take their user experience work very seriously."
Client Project Sponsor
What I learned
You can still be agile in a waterfall project
Even if you have no involvement in the development phase, you can still refine your designs and test your assumptions before handoff by iterating on designs with your stakeholders long before handoff.
Don't sleep on user recruitment.
Knowing what I know now, I would’ve prepared to use proxy users much earlier. Even if it meant just testing with colleagues, running usability tests earlier in the design phase would’ve given me more confidence in the final solution.
Don't be afraid to challenge the client when it matters to the user.
I could've questioned the client more on what parts of the application were truly essential. There may have been room to simplify further by digging into whether every step in this very lengthy process was really necessary to assess applicant fit.