Client: Mainstay
Mainstay provides an AI-powered platform that helps colleges and universities foster better communication and engagement with students. The platform aims to drive positive student outcomes by providing real-time, personalized support through chatbots, ensuring students remain on track throughout their educational journey.
Role: Lead Product Designer
As Lead Product Designer, I was responsible for shaping the user experience of Mainstay’s AI platform. My focus was on making the communication between institutions and students more personalized, accessible, and impactful, ensuring that the platform was intuitive for both administrators and students.
The Challenge
Mainstay needed a scalable solution that could handle high volumes of student interactions while providing personalized, real-time support. The platform needed to be easy for higher education institutions to adopt and integrate into their existing systems while maintaining an empathetic and human-centered approach to student engagement.
The Process
Research & Discovery: My team and I conducted extensive research, including user interviews with students, administrators, and advisors. We examined how students interacted with the platform and gathered insights into the unique communication challenges higher education institutions face. This stage informed our understanding of key user needs, such as prompt access to information and emotional support during stressful times like enrollment or exams.
Wireframing & Prototyping: I created wireframes and prototypes that mapped out the end-to-end user journey. The goal was to ensure seamless navigation and communication between students and institutions. The prototypes were tested with users to validate assumptions and refine workflows based on their feedback.
Collaboration with Stakeholders: I worked closely with Mainstay’s product, engineering, and customer success teams to ensure that design decisions aligned with AI's technical capabilities and met the organization's strategic goals. Regular design workshops and collaborative sessions ensured alignment across departments, especially when introducing new features or enhancements.
Iterative Design: Employing an agile design process, I delivered iterative design updates that responded to real-time feedback from users and stakeholders. This allowed us to rapidly test, validate, and implement changes that improved the overall experience, keeping the design user-centric and technically feasible.
The Solution
The final product included:
AI-Enhanced Chatbot Interface: An AI chatbot designed to offer tailored, real-time support to students, assisting them with tasks like financial aid, registration, and academic advising.
Simplified Onboarding for Institutions: A streamlined onboarding experience for higher education institutions, allowing administrators to set up and manage the platform quickly and easily.
Data-Driven Insights: An intuitive dashboard for administrators, providing real-time insights into student engagement, enabling data-driven decisions to improve communication strategies.
Human-Centered Design: Designed with empathy at its core, the platform enabled institutions to provide timely, compassionate support, even at scale.
Results
Increased Student Engagement: Student engagement with the platform increased by 25%, especially during key academic periods such as registration and finals.
Improved Retention Rates: Universities using the platform saw a marked improvement in student retention rates, which can be attributed to the personalized and consistent support provided through the AI chatbot.
Faster Onboarding for Institutions: Institutions reported a 40% reduction in onboarding time, enabling faster adoption and implementation of the platform.
Positive Feedback from Users: Both students and administrators reported high satisfaction with the platform's ease of use and personalized support.
Conclusion
At Mainstay, I successfully led the product design efforts to improve communication between higher education institutions and students. The AI-driven platform enhanced student engagement and provided institutions with valuable insights to support students more effectively. By focusing on user-centered design, I contributed to creating a solution that positively impacted student outcomes and streamlined the administrative process for institutions.
