Designing a Better Program Discovery Experience

UX Content Design · User Research · Content Strategy

The Challenge

Prospective students often struggled to identify the Harvard Chan degree program that best matched their academic background and career goals. As a result, some applied to programs for which they were not eligible.

My Role

During a major website redesign, I led the content strategy for a new Program Finder experience. I established the metadata structure for every degree program, collaborated with digital and web development teams, and helped design a tool that simplified program discovery for prospective students.

The Approach

To better understand the admissions journey, I combined feedback from student focus groups with findings from an extensive, year-long user research study conducted by an external vendor. Together, these insights revealed that prospective students had to visit individual program pages one at a time to assess eligibility and compare options.

In response, I proposed a centralized Program Finder that allowed users to filter degree programs by academic background, interests, and eligibility—making it significantly easier to identify relevant programs and determine the best fit.

The Impact

The Program Finder became one of the School's most heavily used admissions resources, receiving more than 336,000 pageviews in its first calendar year. By simplifying program discovery and comparison, it created a more intuitive experience for prospective students while reducing a common point of confusion in the admissions process.