Tasseled
Pathways to More Affordable Degrees and Debt-Free Futures
Introduction
Tasseled's algorithm compares college transfer tables to suggest general education courses available at local community colleges. Students can build comprehensive semester-by-semester plans that replace costly courses with more affordable and equivalent alternatives. After earning course credits, students can transfer to a 4-year school with increased acceptance odds and potential savings of up to 40% on the overall cost of their degree.
Role & Contribution
The Tasseled team enlisted our studio and creative bench to reimagine the product with the goal of boosting adoption and extending value to future audiences through new features. To achieve this, I collaborated with colleagues from various disciplines including Content Design / UX Writing, User Experience Research (UXR), and Marketing. Together, we worked closely with Tasseled's founding team to define the company's mission, vision, and values, align on direction, and rethink the product experience from the ground up.
Product Challenge
In the last 20 years, in-state college tuition at 4-year public schools has increased by 158% (that's 56%, adjusted for inflation). Unlike the generations before, the modern college student risks shouldering unprecedented financial burdens by taking on massive student loan debt just to reach the minimum requirements for many entry level positions in their field of study.
Lack of financial ability also forces many of students to limit their consideration of schools and areas of study to only what is affordable to them—potentially furthering the income gaps and limiting opportunities for many severely underserved and marginalized communities before they've even graduated high school.
Furthermore, lower-cost community colleges carry a negative social stigma… one so strong that many students and families dismiss what could be an affordable path to a college degree because they are worried what family or their neighbors might think.
Students aren't really shopping for the best prices during their college planning process, thus colleges and universities aren't incentivized to be competitive to attract applicants. This plus the increase in tuition year-over-year means college will continue to get more and more expensive and there's really no end in sight.
Tasseled hopes to disrupt that future by creating a tool to help students shop for their degrees, and thus force colleges and universities to be competitive with one another in order to attract student applicants.
Company Background
In 2017, Vipul found himself in a bind while transferring from a community college to Boston University: He had a semester’s worth of transfer credits that wouldn’t BU wouldn’t accept… Vipul faced the reality of spending thousands of dollars to retake his courses and the disappointment of delaying his degree by a year.
Frustrated, Vipul wrote an algorithm to help him prove his transfer credits were already equivalent to the courses offered at BU. Using this, Patel successfully appealed Boston’s decision and could transfer all his credits without incurring more debt or further delaying his graduation. (Read more about Vipul's journey in this TechCrunch interview)
After the experience Vipul realized he had an opportunity to help other students facing similar transfer challenges, so he got a few college friends together and released the first evolution of Tasseled: a transfer credit appeal tool named "JustTransfer."
Market Opportunity
Fast-forward to 2020: The world went into lockdown at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, millions of college students all over the U.S. were moving back home and scrambling for ways to continue their education from the safety of home. The team pivoted the original transfer credit appeal tool to meet the overwhelming need. “Covid Course Plan” leveraged the original course-matching algorithm but expanded the feature set so that students could now find transferrable equivalent courses offered remotely by community colleges nearby.
Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, attending a community college carried a negative stigma… but after March 2020, spots in online courses at community colleges were highly competitive and scarce. The pandemic has caused a sudden cultural shift in the perception of the value of community college and legitimized a path to higher education with a substantial decrease in tuition costs.
Sadly, the JustTransfer tool had all the ingredients needed for success, yet it failed to gain traction with college students. Stumped by this slow adoption, Vipul and his team searched for experienced partners to help them uncover user pain points, expand the feature set, and launch a reimagined MVP.
Project Discovery
To better understand the product's current state and challenges, we began by interviewing the founding team. During these candid discussions, we gathered insights about what had gone well and what the team wished they had done differently.
[Fig 1] Vipul's founder interview insights.
Notably, we discovered a significant problem: The team could not determine if students had used the product successfully because they hadn’t implemented analytics or conducted user research.
[Fig 2] Nelson's founder interview insights.
After our conducting founder interviews, we aimed to get internal alignment on what issues the product would focus on solving through conduction product workshops.
[Fig 3] Brand Workshop: Problem statement definition.
With new directional clarity, our next task was to workshop the company’s mission and vision statements. Next, we worked together to craft a clear and concise “Northstar” statement that could communicate the product value quickly and clearly.
[Fig 4] Brand Workshop: Vision statement.
[Fig 5] Brand Workshop: Mission statement.
[Fig 6] Brand Workshop: Northstar statement.
We audited the "JustTransfer" product's current state and documented any significant problems with the user experience. Our team observed that while the tool was capable, it relied on outdated UX, was visually overwhelming, and lacked a clear architecture or mapped user journey.
[Fig 7] JustTransfer homepage, 2019.
Additionally, the web tool was not mobile-friendly even though we knew that the majority of our target audience relies heavily on mobile devices.
Based on these insights, we synthesized our findings into areas of focus:
Trust: Students shouldn't have to question if the suggested transfer plan and the credits would “really transfer.” Tasseled needs to communicate the hallmarks of a trusted company
Clarity: Students need help understanding how course recommendations are made and how cost estimations are calculated
Guidance: Students need to know what steps involved in taking action on a transfer plan
Confidence: Students should feel confident that they can use Tasseled to customize a realistic transfer plan
Product Definition
From here, we collaborated to create a detailed journey map documenting important milestones, hypothesized goals, actions, considerations, emotions, opportunities, and surfaced pain points during a prospective college student’s final year of high school.
[Fig 8] Tasseled Journey Map via Figma Prototype.
Next, we used the pain points to create problem statements and used the “How Might We” framework to hypothesize solutions. Then, we organized patterns in affinity maps to organize our work into themes.
[Fig 9] "How Might We" statements from our product workshop.
Last, we prioritized our affinity themes into a roadmap organized into what was technically feasible in 6 months, and what could bring value in the future.
[Fig 10] Tasseled Roadmap via FigJam.
User Research
Partnering with Li-Nah Koh, we recruited a small group of prospective first-time college students via usertesting.com:
Study Participants:
5 of 5 were current high school seniors in the United States
5 of 5 intended to go to college after obtaining their high school diploma
5 of 5 said cost was "extremely important" factor in choosing a college
5 of 5 had a specific degree/major they intended to pursue
2 of 5 had already accepted an offer of admission to a 4-year college
2 of 5 were waiting to hear back from colleges they had applied to
1 of 5 had not applied for college yet
UXR Goals:
Learn more about the process, needs, and pain points of high school students planning for and preparing to attend college
Find out how the concepts introduced in the Tasseled prototype resonate / “make sense” to high school students
Discover more value high school students can derive from using Tasseled
First, participants answered questions about their experience planning and applying for college
They were then shown the Figma UXR Prototype and walked through the "Getting Started" flow, the plan dashboard, a list of general course recommendations, and how to compare two college plans in Tasseled.
[Fig 11] UXR Prototype - Section 1: Progressive disclosure form that gathers user information to define degree goals, timing, and location.
[Fig 12] UXR Prototype - Section 2: A dashboard showing user goals, a suggested transfer plan by semester, and a cost savings calculator.
[Fig 13] UXR Prototype - Section 3: A list or equivalent course recommendations offered at nearby 2-year schools.
Finally, they were asked wrap-up questions to understand what they liked, what they would change, and what value they got out of Tasseled.
UXR Insights:
Participants saw a clear value and need for a product like Tasseled, were interested in using Tasseled as a central place for college planning, and were enthusiastic about signing up.
The Tasseled prototype was extremely effective in helping participants understand the concept of “course equivalency.”
Money was a very important factor for participants. Multiple participants brought up the concept of “debt” organically without being prompted and were averse to being stuck in a cycle of endless debt for college loans.
UXR Recommendation:
Position Tasseled not just around cost savings, but to avoid going into [heavy] student loan debt.
Provide information about community colleges (e.g., a landing page, FAQs) to address and dispel stigmas and assumptions.
Focus on the audience we can impact the most in the near term: current high school students. After the MVP, other segments like current college students and second-degree students can be targeted.
Visual Design
To begin the design process, we focused on a revamp of the user flow integrating the insights from user testing, user journey mapping, and the feature themes identified in affinity mapping to guide our approach. Through brainstorming sessions, we explored ways to optimize the tool's navigation, ensuring users could easily progress from setting their initial goals to implementing their plans with as little friction as possible.
[Fig 14] Tasseled userflow diagram.
Our next focus was rethinking the UXR prototype's Kanban style dashboard... an approach was overly informed by being overly steeped in project planning tools like Asana. Watching students interact with the prototype made it abundantly clear that the column/card approach was neither intuitive nor mobile-friendly.
In response, we decided to ditch and pivot to more expected UX patterns with pages, cards, and action sheets. I experimented with ways to retain simplicity while maintaining enough system flexibility to allow a user to really customize their plan. Below you can see an example of the working evolution of the first-load dashboard experience.
[Fig 15] Dashboard evolution (from left to right): UXR mid-fidelity prototype; Mid-design sprint milestone; MVP release.
An example of an area of focus is informed by the positive response to the "Cost Estimator" feature during UXR… it was the "aha" moment for every participant, but only after they really understood what it could do. We required students take a few actions before the values updated in the card, meaning they didn't get that lightbulb moment until later. Because "clarity" was rallying theme during internal workshops and UXR making the Degree Cost Calculator super clear, super fast was very high priority. After all, a product that is all about saving money should demonstrate that value on first glance.
[Fig 16] Degree Cost Calculator card evolution.
To achieve this, I collaborated with Content Design colleague Li-Na Koh to employ thoughtful language choices and visual cues that distill the Degree Cost Calculator for optimal clarity. I then explored ways to strengthen the relationship between cost and savings by employing visual hierarchy, color hierarchy, and finessing the information architecture. The result of my experiments (shown above) increased quick readability with the use of clear headlines, emphasized values, contextual descriptions and conditional content.
[Fig 16] Degree Cost Calculator page evolution (from left to right): Initial concept; Mid-sprint milestone; MVP release.
After revamping the Degree Cost Calculator card, we switched our focus to create the Cost Calculator subpage. During my experiments (shown above) I focused on providing users with complex information and detailed descriptions without visual overwhelm.
[Fig 17] Userflow: Opening the Degree Cost Calculator from the Plan Dashboard.
By organizing costs into categories and introducing action sheets (shown above), I was able to really simplify the first glance read while still allowing users to access full customization. After tapping a category, users are presented with an action sheet where they could make their own adjustments to tuition, incorporate expected grants and scholarships, and add their own living expenses. My goal was to connect how adjustments directly impact amounts, helping students understand how their decisions can impact their financial future.
[Fig 18] Userflow: Reviewing semester recommendations, selecting a course equivalent, and getting course details.
Once a user taps on a semester card, they are shown a list of the general education courses they are expected to take during the first two years of the degree program at their goal school. Tapping a course card reveals a list of lower-cost equivalents offered by nearby schools they can safely swap the course for.
[Fig 19] (from left to right) Plan Dashboard zero state; Plan Dashboard propagated; Your Plans overview page.
After a user has replaced all the recommended courses, the Degree Cost Calculator automatically updates to show the total cost of the degree after factoring in the savings from the new plan. Students have the option to create multiple plans for various schools or degrees, allowing them to compare the potential savings across different scenarios.
Product Launch
Initially, our strategy was to launch the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) nationwide across the United States, aiming for broad accessibility and impact. However, upon closer examination of our database capabilities, the executive team made a strategic decision to pivot towards a pilot launch in New York State. This shift allowed us to ensure comprehensive coverage of transfer tables for both community colleges and four-year institutions, ensuring a robust and reliable foundation for our initial rollout.
Alongside the product development, we worked on redesigning our marketing website. This revamped webpage showcased our rebranding efforts and generated excitement ahead of our launch. It also served as a valuable tool for lead generation, gauging interest, and building a waitlist of interested students. Using smart segmentation, students indicating their location within New York State received exclusive notifications about the pilot launch, ensuring that our initial users were not only in the target demographic but also positioned to offer valuable feedback and influence the product's future.
The team launched the MVP pilot in New York State in January 2022.