Foonda Scholarship app

A platform to connect students and funders to increase and democratise tertiary educational and career opportunities in South Africa.

August 2020

 

  • Project goal

    The objective of this project was to create a platform that is easily accessible for less privileged communities in SA, and serve them with educational, job, internship opportunities that are not only relevant to their skills and qualifications, but also immediately in reach.

  • Client and project type

    The project execution was a Progressive Web App. Foonda is a startup founded by a Local entrepreneur in the Financial sector. The project was fulfilled through a small tech company, who consulted me directly to lead the UX and UI.

  • My role and responsibilities

    Research, user flows & stories, sketching, wireframing, visual design and prototypes. As an independent UX consultant, I worked closely with the tech and implementation team at the tech company. They developed the business case, and rough business requirements from which I had to solve for on the app.

 

Project Summary

How might we automatically match a user with career opportunities that appeals to them, and fits their skill and qualifications profile, in order to empower young talent from different backgrounds, streamline the application process, and increase the educational equality in South Africa.

The result would be a ‘feed’ of relevant, and already matched opportunities shown to the user, whereby they can apply with easy ‘one-click’.

In essence, the app aims to make the journey of economic upliftment through education a more immediately viable choice for underprivileged learners.

The Challenge

South African Education Challenges

8% - the percentage of South Africans that speak english at home, school or work

6th place - English only landed #6 most common second language in SA

55% - Percentage of matriculants under 24 years of age without a job

 

South Africa has an overwhelming supply of young talented people. 

Unfortunately still today, there’s a barrier to access tertiary education and opportunities for lots of communities.  Wealth and access to technology isn’t the only barrier.

How can access to higher education, which is an exclusive system, be transformed into one which is more representative of the general population.

User challenge:

Onboarding was the biggest challenge and would be our success determinator. During onboarding, we want to capture all information that’s usually required in a scholarship/internship application. This includes personal information, documentation and any educational qualifications and experience to date. A very tedious process. If we succeeded, the rest of the application process would be almost ‘automatic’.

Budget challenge:

Budget is always a constraint. Foonda is a startup, and can’t afford fully custom built tech intelligence. Most of the features had to be executed in ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions to get tech MVP out.  This required a lot of collaboration between me and the solutions architect, to define the features and their behaviour on the front end. 

Technical challenge:

The chosen execution was a Progressive Web App. This saves time to get the product out in the market, and is more affordable to the client. PWA’s pose their own limitations. Today, PWA’s can access almost all the same functionality as native apps, but when this project started, we were limited with some native device functionality on the web.

 

Methodologies used

 

  • Competitor analysis

  • Technical Assessment

  • User flows

  • Persona exploration

  • Wireframing

  • Prototyping

  • UI design

  • Development collaboration (throughout)

The Process

Competitor analysis

Doing research for this project, there we very few competitors. For this reason, I researched rather for apps that simulate the same experience and emotional journey.

Persona exploration

In South Africa, the population all graduate or matriculate at different times in their life. For me, it was then more important to understand their base commonalities to segment them.

 

User flows

With users from different levels of education, I mapped out the user flows catered specific to that user’s level of education. An important consideration in the usr flows were key moments to place instant gratification in order to get them through the long onboarding phase.

Prototyping

Once I had wireframes out, I prototyped each and every flow with the aim to

  1. Identify gaps and negative flows

  2. Test positive flows with stakeholders and few users

 

Success and results

 

Publications and mentions:

Featured in 9 Publications including Mail&Guardian, 702 radio, SABC news, and Ventureburn.com

Funding

Recently received R2.1 million in funding from the Diageo Empowerment Fund

Awards

Foonda app made it on the top two in the 2019 Diageo Social Tech Startup Challenge.

Conclusion

Taking a user centred approach really pays off. Taking time to understand the emotions the user will experience, and where the opportunities lie for the app to serve and help them. Foonda is one of the first of it’s kind on the market and attempting a draughting but reward task. It’s not perfect, and like the ever changing landscape in South African educational up skilling, the app and will need to evolve.

My learnings:
I found inspiration in unexpected places. Something this taught me, is to look at references and products that can have the same emotional journey, rather than looking at our own competitors in the same industry. This means that research starts before the project, with my daily engaging in any products in my surroundings.