The Ecole Professionnelle Supérieur de Naturopathie (EPSN) in Lausanne, home of Centre André Henzelin (cAH), is a contemporary naturopathy school that was in need of not only a new website (to go with the cAH intranet that storm created), but also a streamlined online application process for prospective students. Its previous online application process was digital, but it lacked an intuitive flow on both sides: students who were applying were left in the dark about the status of their application and admissions officers lost contact with students who did not complete their application. storm came in with a fresh approach and vision to clear up the cloudy and complicated process.
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The online application that storm designed and developed for EPSN is based on seven interviews with admissions staff and students. Previously, the application process would take 2-3 weeks and the admissions officers did not know anything about the applicant until they had completed the application. Students were confused about what they needed to do, which made the process longer.
Students receive notifications throughout the application process, which saves time for admissions officers who no longer have to get in touch with students to explain next steps. They also have a global view of which courses students have applied for, so they can anticipate which ones will be too full or too empty and adapt the program accordingly.
On the other side, students have a clear view of what they must submit throughout the process and what the next steps will be. The overall process is transparent and they receive notifications and updates on the status of their application so they know if they are missing documents, if they need to submit additional information, or if they’re application is being reviewed.
Within the first two weeks of the launch of this updated process, five students had successfully submitted their applications, representing 10% of the available spots at EPSN.
The online application process is a system that has been designed and developed by storm for EPSN, but the system can be adapted for other schools who need to collect the same kind of information from prospective students. The main benefits of this customizable process are that they allow individuals to share details without losing the information, applicants receive notifications about their application status, and the step-by-step process is transparent, which eliminates the anxiety and stress that students often feel while completing and submitting a school application.
If you’re interested in learning more about how we can adapt this digital tool for your school or business, contact us.The greatest challenge storm faced in this project was understanding the full process for the admissions side and for the applicants’ side, and then connecting these two workflows. This challenge was overcome by conducting interviews to discover the needs of each group, and by hosting workshops with live sketching.storm to focus on real needs, and the client saved time and money.
One of the most interesting discoveries during the interviews was that the existing website functioned quite well. The interviews showed that some aspects of the website were just fine the way they were, which meant that storm could focus on what needed to be improved. Without the interviews, most of the website would have been redone and as such, some of the aspects of the website that users liked or appreciated would have been removed and unnecessarily redesigned. This discovery allowed storm to focus on real needs, and the client saved time and money.
This product was successful because of the close collaboration between storm and the EPSN students and admissions staff. There were several rounds of changes throughout the project, from the first mock-ups to the wireframes and even during the coding. storm remained flexible and was able to establish a working structure where changes were easy to adapt. The team utilized a sprint process in order to deliver completed work according to a weekly schedule. For this project, storm played with stakeholder and user interviews, wireframes, designing, live sketching and live testing, and development.
