yocket / internal management tool
optimising the university shortlisting experience for yocket’s counsellors
in this project, i showcase the design evolution of an internal tool feature built for yocket’s counsellors to make informed shortlisting decisions.
impact
~30%
reduction in time taken to create program shortlists
+23%
increase in counsellor CSAT for superocket
+11%
increase in aspirant CSAT for premium services
my role @ yocket
i mainly led design for superocket, yocket’s internal management tool and the platform’s paid, premium experience, while contributing across other company verticals.
about yocket
the overseas education market has grown by leaps and bounds with the rise in the number of students choosing to study abroad each year.
yocket is a community-driven ed-tech platform created to help students secure admissions to universities worldwide.
the platform runs on a freemium model, offering free tools and resources for aspirants, along with paid services to plan their overseas education.
yocket premium
to help aspirants navigate the months-long process of research and documentation, yocket offers personalised counselling for a structured, guided path to studying abroad.
once enrolled, each stage of the journey has specific tasks and requirements for both counsellors and aspirants. with multiple aspirants per counsellor, efficient task management became essential.
to help counsellors track profiles, tasks, documents, and applications, our internal management tool superocket was built as a one-stop shop for managing daily work efficiently.
what’s the problem?
shortlisting university programs is the first step in planning an overseas education—matching an aspirant’s academic goals, personal preferences, and timelines.
as part of yocket’s premium services, counsellors help aspirants create their ideal shortlist.
but, existing issues slowed down the process and added to operational costs.
what issues?
counsellors relied on external resources for research and manual documentation, this was highly time-consuming.
they had no built-in tools to guide program recommendations.
counsellors faced difficulty managing shortlisting for multiple aspirants simultaneously, increasing workload.
all this, resulted in higher company costs due to the need for additional counsellors.
the goal
to help counsellors complete shortlisting in time for application deadlines, our core OKRs were to:
lower the turnaround time for completing university shortlists
provide the best possible university program recommendations to aspirants
solution: similar profiling
to streamline university shortlisting, we introduced the similar profiles feature in superocket.
the solution compares an aspirant’s profile to past applicants with similar attributes (UG score, backlogs, work experience, aptitude scores, english scores)
it shows the outcomes of those applicants’ university program applications
it leveraged superocket’s database of aspirant and program data, removing the need for manual documentation
implmenting v1
when a counsellor selects a particular similar profile, they can view the profile’s details and view the university programs that this profile had applied to, been rejected from, been waitlisted for, or received an admit for.
the hierarchy in v1 is structured with the selected similar profile as the “parent element” and the university programs as the “child elements”.
counsellors could further choose to filter similar profile results on the basis of specific profile parameters.
issues with v1
with a long list of similar profiles, counsellors had no way of knowing what profile to select to find the right fit — resulting in multiple, unnecessary clicks.
v1’s hierarchy, caused repetition of university programs across multiple similar profiles — redundant for decision-making.
Upon selecting a similar profile and seeing their associated university programs, there was no guidance whether a program was suitable for their current aspirant.
there were no options to filter by the aspirant’s country or course preferences
an improved v2
to address the above issues, one of the first design decisions I made was to invert the hierarchy between university programs and similar profiles in v2.
university program - first apprach
inverted hierarchy: university programs are now the parent element, with past aspirant profiles as children
this made it easier to access programs for shortlisting and removed redundant repeats from v1.
admit chance percentage
we added an algorithm-calculated percentage showing the aspirant’s likelihood of admission for each program.
this helped counsellors make faster, more informed shortlisting decisions.
this feature was also renamed admit chances to reflect this focus.
filtering system
we introduced country and course filters to narrow program results
“other” filters show admit likelihood for specific program-profile combinations, based on past trends
impact
by introducing and iterating on this shortlisting feature on superocket, improved counsellor efficiency, reducing time spent on program shortlisting by ~30%
this raised counsellor csat scores for superocket by 23%, reflecting smoother workflows and easier management of multiple aspirants
increased aspirant csat from from ~57% to ~68%, showing higher trust in the accuracy and timeliness of shortlists
we received consistent positive feedback from counsellors on improvements shaped by their input
these boosted aspirant satisfaction and recommendations, contribute to potential revenue growth
reflections
this project required me to explore and understand a variety of design patterns, including navigation, filters, hierarchy, and content structuring.
i conducted usability testing with counsellors to gather feedback on prototypes of V2 which helped me assess their performance and identify more areas for improvement during the redesign.
i learned the importance of investing in internal tool ux to boost productivity, collaboration, and satisfaction — directly impacting customer experience
