Scholarship Finder
Increased Active Users by 195%
B2C EdTech Media & Journalism Financial Tool Decision Tool Scholarships Search
The Highlights
What was our goal?
Re-launch the Scholarship Finder with a robust database of new scholarships, expand filter options, and redesign the detail card to increase user engagement, lead generation, and account creation.
What were the results?
There were major increases in traffic and engagement.
  • Substantial increase in Active Users
  • Significant increase in Engagement
What did users think?
Overall users were very positive about the tool and were excited to continue using it.
Is it still live?
Yes! You can view it here.
Where did we start?
There were a lot of opportunities.
  • Scholarships were outdated and expired
  • New scholarships were not being added
  • There wasn’t enough info on qualifications or requirements
  • Fields were often missing information
  • There was no way to save scholarships to revisit later
  • Filters were not extensive enough
  • There was only one action the user could engage in and it led them away from U.S. News
What was my process?
Kick off
  • Conducted 1:1 interviews with key stakeholders to hear their vision and understand business needs
R&D
  • Researched existing U.S. News scholarship offerings to understand the baseline
  • Competitive analysis completed by researching other scholarship finding tools existing on the market and assessed what information and features they offered
Ideation
  • Quick mocks of multiple variants to clarify the direction with key stakeholders
Mocks
  • High-fidelity mocks with responsive states for final stakeholder review and approval
Hand off
  • Annotation in Figma documentation for devs to use as reference during implementation
  • Collaboration with devs to help aid implementation and problem solve any issues
  • Design QA to ensure everything matched the specs
What did we change?
Increased User Touchpoints
Increased opportunities for revenue via user touchpoints
  • Added "Apply" CTA under eligibility criteria
  • Enabled saving scholarships to the U.S. News education dashboard
Account Generation
Boosted return traffic amid by providing value for free account holders
  • Improved filters and additional scholarships for free account holders
Scholarship Data Expansion
Enriched content to improve user value
  • Added eligibility criteria and contact information for each scholarship
  • Added robust new scholarships and removed outdated entries
  • Introduced new filters: extra curricular activities and interests, community affiliations, life situations, amount intervals, application requirements
How did we do?
Post-Launch User Feedback
Method
Conducted remote self-directed user interviews
Challenges
We were struggling to find users looking for scholarships that we could use for our test, so user count was lower than we hoped.
Overall, feedback was positive
  • The large majority liked the information that was on the detail cards and could easily find important information, like the award amount
  • Most would sign up for free accounts to access additional features and information
  • Over half found the filters useful and thorough, and found everything they were looking for
... But there was room to grow
  • Users struggled with eligibility criteria being hidden and needing to expand each card
  • Users thought the search bar was to narrow down scholarships by topic rather than name, leading to unpredictable results
  • There were still a lot of missing information, leading to frustration and confusion
  • Filter logic meant that some combinations led to less results than expected
  • There were noticeable loading issues for some users
How did we address the feedback?
Documentation
  • While watching user research, we noted all issues observed
  • We added issue details, user quotes, video clips, and linked tickets under a shared epic
Prioritization
  • We focused on issues that severely impacted UX and usability first
  • Afterwards, we addressed smaller issues that impacted less people to refine the tool
Taking Action
  • Routed tasks by team: dev for bugs, design for visuals, PM for stakeholder input
  • Hosted cross-functional brainstorm sessions for complex issues, such as fixing the filter logic
Where did we leave things?
Eligibility Criteria Featured
We responded to the feedback that eligibility criteria is the most important by putting eligibility front and center, making it easy to scan for scholarships that are right for them.
Actionable Links replace Missing Info
To address the missing information from third-party data, we decided to replace empty fields with actionable links to "Contact Funder". This gives the user a path forward to find information when it is missing.
Improved Filters
We had multiple brainstorming sessions to figure out what the right logic was for the search bar and filters, revealing the full power of our robust scholarship database by consistently returning a large volume of viable scholarship options.
Disclaimer

This project was conducted during my tenure at U.S. News, which ended in June 2025. Certain details have been removed to honor confidentiality.


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