Zero to one for applicants the system could not see

Context and stakes

International applicants to Ontario colleges had no path of their own. They were routed through a domestic application flow that structurally could not serve them, while navigating visas, foreign credentials, payments, and deadlines where one confusing form can cost an academic year.

My role

I designed the International Application platform from zero: accounts, forms, payments, document workflows, status tracking, and workflows for applicants and operational staff, carried through three full design iterations before launch.

What I built or changed

On my own initiative I set up biweekly interviews with call centre staff, turning frontline support conversations into a continuous pipeline of the most common user problems. Two fixes show how that loop paid off.

The interviews were not a one time study. They became a permanent part of our research practice. Because the same complaints recurred across calls, the most common problems became easy to identify. Password complexity and school name entry were the two clearest issues to address first.

First, passwords: the platform demanded bank grade complexity for a college application, so applicants forgot their passwords, called in, reset them, and repeated the cycle. I traced roughly 15% of support calls to password problems, presented the call volume data, and received immediate approval to simplify the password requirements.

Second, school names: an open text field invited misspellings that created phantom school records and recurring phone cleanup. I replaced it with structured selection.

Outcomes and open threads

After the change was released, total support call volume fell by approximately 15%. The school name problem disappeared at the source.