Cortex by CourseKey
Increasing college student retention and job placement by providing school staff with key insights, data visualizations, and automated communication.
My Role
Director of Product Design
Project Dates
Sep 2021 - Aug 2022
CEO, VP of Product, VP of Business Development, VP of Customer Success, Product Managers (3), Product Designers (2), Engineers (16), QA team (2)
Team
Context
The business problem
Coursekey, an EdTech B2B SaaS startup, secured a Series B funding round in early 2021 with the success of their attendance and academic tracking solutions. However, those solutions weren’t enough to significantly scale their client base and become an essential system in their client’s tech stack.
The customer problem
Most career schools have a similar issue; they buy and use various products to provide point solutions, but no system offers a complete picture of student performance. The sales team at CourseKey knew this well because it affected many prospective clients’ decision to add CourseKey - another point solution system - to their tech stack.
Our idea
Let’s integrate with other point solutions to provide aggregated insights about student performance and become the go-to interface for accessing and understanding career schools’ data.
My contributions
Interviewed current and prospective clients, analyzed client feedback, and administered usability tests.
Research & Testing
Leadership
Scoped projects, hired two in-house Product Designers, and managed the design team.
Defined core feature concepts, re-architected product site map, and created the ‘workspace’ concept.
Vision & Strategy
Updated design system, designed prototypes, and defined functionality and interaction behavior.
Design & Execution
Research
Identifying pain points and opportunity areas
CourseKey wanted to understand better what kind of data schools needed to compare and how they would act on the insights provided by such data. So, I interviewed school executives, campus presidents, program directors, academic advisors, and instructors from 12 schools to hear about their pain points.
“...GPAs are in Blackboard, and we cannot import them into our Student Information System. So, we can’t easily count up how many students are below the threshold and see how many students are at risk of dropping.”
“We figure that a 5% increase in retention could equate to an additional $250K month over month. So, that would be ~3MM/year.”
“We end up being more reactive. [If we had the visibility], we would spend more time engaging students, which would lessen the need for human resources. ”
“For nursing [students], the minimum requirement is 75% attendance. If anyone is below that, we should be notified immediately.”
Key takeaways:
Career schools are for-profit businesses that want more efficient processes.
Schools unanimously ranked retention as their top priority to invest in.
Schools want to understand the WHY behind poor student performance, but compiling records and student information takes time and effort.
Outreach to help get students back on track is time-consuming and is more effective if provided earlier.
Schools want to compare enrollment data, academic performance, and graduation and placement rates across programs and campuses to identify areas for improvement.
Schools must adhere to compliance regulations and compile reports for accreditors to maintain their accreditation and receive government funding. This process is tedious and takes time away from focusing on the students.
Understanding relationships and dependencies
My research illuminated the complex and interdependent relationships among career schools, students, accreditors, and the government. The executive team already understood these relationships well, but I noticed other employees needed help understanding the whole picture. So, I created the visualization below to communicate these concepts to various teams and develop a solution that benefited all parties involved.
Vision
Build a premium product (Cortex)
The CEO, VP of Product, and I worked together to define Cortex’s main functions:
Integrate with other widely-used products to pull critical data relating to enrollment, retention, placement, and compliance into Coursekey.
Display key insights from compiled data for staff to quickly understand areas that need improvement and students who need assistance.
Improve communication efficiency by automatically informing the appropriate people about important insights, events, and changes.
Implement structural improvements
I knew it would be essential to redesign our site map and page linking structure as a foundation for new Cortex functionality. So, I took the initiative to draft and implement such changes and used the opportunity to enhance other everyday user flows that I knew clients struggled to navigate through.
Product Site Map Updates (2022)
Create the concept of a ‘Workspace’
Schools break up the student lifecycle into three stages; Enrollment, Retention, and Placement. I created the concept of the Cortex workspaces to organize data and automated actions for each stage. The schools I interviewed unanimously ranked student retention a top priority, so I started with the Retention Workspace, which aimed to identify students at risk of dropping out of their program.
Retention Workspace: Overview Page (Version 1)
User Testing
Feedback from the CAPPS Conference
School leaders confirmed the value of displaying students at risk in a workspace setting. However, there was much to improve.
Retention Workspace: Prototype (Version 1)
In-person testing at the CAPPS Conference
CourseKey was invited to attend and speak at the annual California Association of Private Postsecondary Schools (CAPPS) conference in San Diego. I took this opportunity to meet with career college leaders from around the country to gather feedback on the Retention Workspace concept.
“I’d be uncomfortable with the revenue showing to all positions. We want academic advisors to focus on student success, not revenue. ”
“Love it! I average 2-4 hours daily running reports to find this information. We also might need to integrate with email providers so that we can automate that communication tracking. ”
“I’d like to see risk factors on the pivot table. If we could see those, we would have this up all day, every day, and constantly monitoring it... Also, we wouldn’t use the contact buttons on the table; we’d need to dig into the student page first.”
Changes after several rounds of testing
Added risk factor information to the pivot table.
Removed ‘Revenue at Risk’ - it was not necessary to display to administrators, directors, or registrars.
Adjusted the setup process to allow specifying risk factor weights and thresholds at the program level instead of the campus level.
Moved student contact information from the pivot table to the student page, accessed via the pivot table.
Added the ability to filter page data by instructor, course, or student status.
Added a ‘reset filters’ button.
Removed ‘source apps’ since they were to be managed in a separate tab and by a separate type of user.
Added a toggle to view ‘actual’ vs ‘calculated‘ values for each risk factor.
Updated colors used in charts and cleaned up the UI.
Retention Workspace: Overview Page (Final Version)
Leadership
Scoped Cortex projects
After the successful launch of the stand-alone Retention Overview dashboard in January 2021, the executive team had an ambitious timeline to release the remaining Cortex features. To inform the executive team of what was achievable, I defined and scoped the remaining project requirements, estimated design timelines, and advised the sequencing of releases. As a result, I determined we needed two more product designers to achieve the timeline the CEO decided was necessary.
Expanded the design team
I presented a case to the CFO and CEO with three scenarios that detailed design resources, estimated output, and the resulting release schedules. The scenario that delivered the earliest release required three product designers. Although hiring two more designers required reallocating funds, the executive team granted my request. I published a job description, reviewed applications, interviewed applicants, and hired, trained, and managed two new product designers.
Managed the design team
My goal was to inspire creative user-centered solutions while ensuring all output aligned with the Cortex vision. I assigned projects based on my direct reports' skills, experience, and interests. I organized and defined project requirements using ClickUp, and supplied context and resources to my team. To guarantee consistency and validity of design work across projects, I led weekly design team meetings, feedback sessions, and 1:1 check-ins with my reports and collaborators from other teams.
Design
Design system evolution
In 2020, I designed the first CourseKey design system. CourseKey previously stored and displayed less robust data sets, so the design system featured large components and typography with plenty of padding, creating a clean and focused interface.
However, to fit the data visualizations and heavy data tables for Cortex features, it was essential to size down fonts and components, adjust container styles, and tweak the color palette.
Student Page comparison: 2021 vs 2022
Design system components (2022)
Cortex features and functionality
Over the next two quarters, my team finalized the designs for the remaining Cortex features; an automated communication system, Enrollment and Placement Workspaces, and a compliance section.
Automations: For efficient, targeted communication
Each workspace's primary function is to notify the appropriate people when actionable or congratulatory events are detected. The automated communication system saves staff time writing emails, texting students, and making phone calls so they can focus on face-to-face interactions.
Enrollment Workspace: Built to increase student status conversions
To become an active student eligible for financial aid, an enrolled student must attend at least one hour in the first week of their program start date. The Enrollment Workspace gives staff the tools and visibility they need to ensure students convert from enrolled to active.
The Overview tab provides a real-time view of Day 1 attendance so that staff can identify absent students and begin outreach immediately, protecting the resources invested in recruiting students. The Insights tab empowers administrators to identify enrollment trends and implement new processes to increase student status conversions. The Automations tab automates communication with students to ensure they are prepared for Day 1 and alerts staff if students don't show up during their first week.
Placement: Created to increase job placement rates
Schools are required to measure job placement outcomes for accreditation. However, verifying job placement and understanding why some students have an easier time getting a job than others is difficult and time-consuming. Schools typically store placement data in spreadsheets or static documents, meaning decision-makers miss breakdowns and business-wide views.
The Placement Workspace tracks student placement by automatically sending placement forms to students at specified intervals, displaying the collected data, and enabling staff to filter by specific programs, campuses, and student statuses to cross-compare outcomes. These capabilities allow schools to pull insights from high-performing programs and campuses and use them to improve others.
Compliance: Real-time visibility to enable proactive intervention
Schools must prove they comply with state and federal standards to stay accredited. Compiling the data is typically a lengthy, manual process. Findings of low rates may force schools to shut down programs or entire campuses.
The Compliance tab provides real-time visibility into the two most critical metrics: graduation and placement rates. The system monitors rates and automatically notifies the appropriate staff when rates fall close to the minimum required thresholds, enabling schools to make changes before it’s too late.
Outcomes
Business outcomes
CourseKey's CEO presented the above prototypes to schools across the country during the first half of 2022. He closed 8 pre-sale deals totaling more than $1.5 million before Cortex launched in Q3, 2022. The success of our pre-sales prompted 3 offers for a Series-C funding round. The offers are currently in negotiation.
Professional growth
Working with the executive team taught me to advocate confidently for my team's needs while directing multiple projects simultaneously. The opportunity to grow and manage the design team encouraged me to seek leadership training, mentorships, and professional communities outside CourseKey. I learned from product leaders around the globe how to create a safe and productive environment for my team and provide feedback to help them grow as design professionals.