Design and develop a digital product — a mini-program (Part 1/2)
We developed our first ever mini-program after four-month work🤗(not yet finished, but nearly there). The product aims to provide users — students with a convenient and reliable tool to find oversea universities that suit them most. This is not a technical article with coding, but a story of this product. As we are experiencing the final revision, I will talk about the first part of the story here in this article.
About Mini-Programs: mini-programs are streamlined, ‘light’ versions of the full-function apps. They offer users the chance to experience the high-level benefits of a company’s app without the need to download an entire app (sources & more information: https://eggplantdigital.cn/what-is-a-wechat-mini-program/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEObQ8LdyEM)
Key steps: Agile methodology has been applied in the design and development process to make sure everyone in this project was on track and could serve the needs of the business collaboratively.
The key steps are: pre- and initial meetings with clients to understand their stories; analyse clients’ needs; identify problems; come up with solutions for further discussions; scratch the product with clients; design the product; develop a demo, test the demo and seek feedback; and finalise MVP1.
Resources: one product owner, one product manager, one IT manager, one UI designer, one front-end developer, one back-end developer.
1. The start of the story:
Last year, my friend J came to me and asked if data could provide some suggestions in helping students with their university applications. I thought the answer was “Yes” as data are usually quite smart in facilitating decision-making as well as predictions. After dealing with data for several years, how to use data effectively and develop products that can help stakeholders are something that interest me most. I was so excited about this project and decided to note down the development process of this digital product.
2. Needs analyses:
J set up his business ten years ago as an international student recruitment agent, providing service to students in China who seek opportunities to study overseas. J’s business has been severely impacted by the covid-19 pandemic as most of the countries close their borders for student visa holders. Stats showed that the 2020 market decreased sharply by 14% on a year-over-year basis. Nowadays, although students are still passionate about studying abroad, their study journeys are still “up in the air” and affected by entry policy, visa, expenses of the flight tickets and the unpredictable pandemic.
J still got confidence in his business as he has a potential pool with 20,000 clients: Regardless of other agents or providers here in Anhui — a province in the East China region, there are about 1 million undergraduates and 1 million secondary school graduates every year. According to the previous data, at least 10% of them would consider studying aboard, which is a large number of potential clients for J and his team.
To equip his business with better and more effective tools, J would like to take the chance to upgrade his business, bring data, algorithms, and AI into his consulting process and change his business from manual to automatic, in which case he can keep his team in small size and be able to provide good advices to students as experienced consultants.
3. Identify problems:
After some discussion, we identified three key problems for J’s business:
- Capacity: J and his team (around 7–10 staff) do not have the capacity to provide service to a large number of potential clients;
- Matching students with universities: J and his team have always been asked questions like “What’s the chance for me to apply for the University of A? How likely can I get an offer from the University of B? and what are the universities that I should apply based on my current situations”. To answer those questions, the team had to collect clients’ information first, then check it against every single requirement of the university the student intended to apply for, and come to a conclusion regarding how likely the student’s application is successful. Usually the student doesn't come with only one university in mind, some of them would like to consult for ten to fifteen universities;
- Reporting: J and his team usually spend time on preparing personalised reports for each client and the processes are manual, repetitive and time-consuming.
4. Come up with solutions:
To solve the problems we identified, we planned to develop a digital product for clients to input the information that is relevant to their applications. We have considered products like a full-version app or a website, but a mini-program seemed to suit our needs most. Mini-programs are small and light, and easy to get with Wechat — a Chinese multi-purpose instant messaging, social media and mobile payment app, the world’s largest standalone mobile app since 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users(Wikipedia). Most of our target users, secondary and university students, uses Wechat everyday, and the cost for developing a mini-program is small compared to developing a full-version app or a website. It would be a perfect product for our MVP1.
By analysing users’ data and comparing those against their peers’/other applicants’ information in the data warehouse, the product will provide suggestions and predictions to the students regarding their applications.
5. Scratch the framework:
Working together with clients and the product manager, we drafted the outline of the product with a focus on the key functions. The product manager scratched the framework based on our discussion and agreement:
6. UI design:
Our UI designer started her work making the product looks nice, interesting and user-friendly. We did some research on the style preferred by our target users. According to the feedback, “creative”, “interactive” and “smooth to use” are three characteristics that stood out to us. With bright colours and rounded squares, the design would like to ensure the “filling in a form” activity is less boring.
7. Ongoing
The final product is under development at this stage, I will share it with you when it has been finalised and published.
Thanks for reading! Any comments or suggestions, feel free to drop me a line here or via my LinkedIn.