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

The forms were locale driven: address models matched to the applicant’s country rather than approximated, and name handling that supported mononyms and patronymics instead of forcing a first and last name that would not match a passport or transcript. The application was built on the OCAS design system I created.

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 presented the call volume data on overcomplicated password requirements and reworked the field.

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

The international platform

Completion rates on the international application rose after launch.

Address entry, from finding to shipped change

One example: international applicants struggled to enter their addresses. An address from India, with flat and building lines, a landmark, a locality, and a 6-digit PIN code, didn’t fit fields built for a Canadian street, province, and postal code. Synthesis showed the issue went beyond one form. We had designed from a Canadian default, and fixing it meant mapping how address data differed across the countries applicants came from. The result was country-first address entry: applicants choose their country, then see address fields drawn from one of eight templates built for it. It shipped on every platform that supported the international application, and address data errors dropped as applicants stopped forcing their addresses into fields that didn’t fit.

The password and school name fixes

The password change applied across the whole OCAS system, so it reached every application platform, not just the international one. Total inbound call volume fell 15 percent in the months after the change compared with the months before, measured from call-centre volumes. The school name problem disappeared at the source.

Team

The OCAS development team, who built the platform. Call centre staff, whose biweekly interviews fed the research pipeline. Operational staff, whose workflows the platform also served.