GiveTHX

Highlights

Who
I led UX strategy and product design for GiveThx's mobile transformation, partnering directly with stakeholders to define a scalable native app foundation within a 2-week/ 40-hour engagement.

Summary

The development of Navigate360 Recruitment Management started as an engineering initiative fueled solely by industry standards of CRM and higher education recruitment processes. It was time to strategize; that's where we, UX and Product, developed a plan! Rooted in data from discovery user groups, we crafted a roadmap with detailed feature requirements. We iteratively researched, designed and developed features while Account Management Team used my high fidelity prototype to recruit clients for beta testing. I led design and research initiatives for the entire product development cycle of beta release, released publicly mid-2024.

What I delivered:

• Developing Processes: Introduced a process for identifying and addressing gaps in the early experience and proposed solutions to elevate partner solutions for discussion with the Product and Engineering teams. Also facilitated Discovery Research and developed Beta-testing research processes to be executed by Account and Product Managers.

• Build Empathy & Strategy: Led discovery user group sessions to create journey maps that fueled empathy and defined product strategy and roadmaps in collaboration with Product Managers and alignment with the VP of Engineering.

• Impactful Solutions: I led research and design initiatives for core features for:

  • Students: Application submission and tracking

  • Admins: Form Builder for public forms (like inquiry forms and student applications) and Import prospect feature, admin import process

  • Advisors: Prospective/Applicant profile for advisors, student and advisor application tracking, report builder, email campaign builder + monitoring

My Approach - How I Tackled This Project

This project started engineering-led, using CRM industry standards to build a lean MVP - a more robust version of the current prospective student management experience. I was tasked with adding the user context & their business goals to a generic solution.

Research & Discovery Process

• External focus groups + 1:1 Interviews with senior leadership at institutions, advisors & students to understand current processes & experiences related to pre-enrollment to investigate opportunities our platform could fulfill

• Internal interviews with account managers on different product teams (subject matter experts on pre-enrollment processes) to gather feedback on early wireframes

• Competitive analysis + journey mapping to present findings translated into opportunities and feature requirements

• Collaborative roadmap building with Product Managers leveraging a Now, Next, Later & Impact Effort Impact matrix

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Bi-Weekly workshops using Lean UX to determine gaps, collaborate on solutions, and later share designs & get feedback from engineering and product

• Weekly stand-up guidance - answering questions related to interactions, layout, and experience

• UX audit conducted to discover areas that wouldn't function well for user use cases

• UX action tracker spreadsheet (managing 3+ active projects in various stages) shared with engineering & product team to create visibility on when to expect designs, user research completion, and UX audit results. We later turned it into a team action tracker for cross-functional visibility.

Key Features & Problems We Set Out to Solve

• Inquiry Form with Account Creation & Authentication
  Key problems addressed:

  • Data integrity - Built a workflow that creates profiles upon submission, allowing institutions to track and manage communication from the start while limiting duplicate data. If students submit more than one inquiry, it's directly tied to their profile, leading to better relationship management between advisors and students that carries over through the application and eventually enrollment, allowing for a 360-degree view.

  • Flexible forms for any department (Nursing, STEM, General, etc) - stressed the importance of some light branding

  • Notifications for timely attention

  • Versatility of access - mobile/tablet friendly, shareable link to embed in any institution's website or QR code (a tool higher ed massively adopted amid pandemic)

• Custom Form Builder
  Rationale: We found this to be the most cost-effective solution for institutions to connect with interested students - forms not only to collect contact information but contextual information that can be helpful to assist students through their decision and journey to enrollment.

• Application Management Workflow‍ ‍
  The connected experience: Regardless of whether using a 3rd party for application forms or our form builder, provide a way that students can easily submit and track their application, advisors can track and assist students during the application, and admins can configure the application & manage the data.

Outcomes & Impact

Related to faster processing & money earned:

• Eliminated manual data entry, reducing duplicative profiles

• Streamlined inquiry-to-enrollment workflow

• Mobile-first approach captured more inquiries through QR code integration

• Real-time notifications improved response times

• A configurable system reduced IT overhead for institutions

Service ecosystem improvements:

• Students get immediate confirmation & can track progress

• Advisors receive enriched profiles with contextual information for better relationship building

• Administrators maintain data quality while having the flexibility to adapt to departmental needs

Skills Showcased & Why It Matters

Strategic Problem Solving - Transformed an engineering-led MVP into a user-centered solution that solved real business problems. You get someone who digs into the why before jumping to solutions, making that jump a lot more secure.

Cross-Functional Leadership - Facilitated alignment between user needs, business goals, and technical constraints across multiple teams. Nothing gets lost in translation, projects stay on track.

Service Design Thinking - Designed for entire user ecosystems, not just individual screens. This means better retention, fewer support tickets, happier customers across all touchpoints.

Research-Driven Decisions - Conducted workshops and stakeholder interviews that directly informed feature priorities. You get designs backed by data, not assumptions.

Process Innovation - co-created systems like the UX action tracker with Product Manager that made entire teams more efficient. I spot gaps and build solutions that scale.

Stakeholder Management - Successfully presented to internal & external senior leadership and facilitated workshops across user groups. You never have to worry about me in client meetings.

Bottom line: You're getting someone who makes teams work better, stakeholders happier, and products more successful.

Highlighted Outcomes

+3x improved Staff Response Times

80% time saved from manual data entry of prospects

$522K tuition revenue enrolled via module within 6 months