Tasseled wants to create a world where everyone can access the education they deserve regardless of their financial ability. With Tasseled's free college planning tool, students can plan a more affordable path to college by taking lower-cost classes at nearby community and 4-year colleges which are guaranteed to transfer to their goal school — saving thousands of dollars on their degree in the process.

I led content design and UX research as part of an embedded design team from All Turtles to bring Tasseled from concept to MVP. Tasseled launched in Q1 2022 and is free to use.

Project

Tasseled was a company started by two technical co-founders and further consisted of a technical team of software engineers and data specialists. Without their own design team, they needed help with all aspects of product, brand, and marketing. Along with another product designer, our two-person embedded design and research team worked with the Tasseled team for a period of one year to help them build their product.

On the content and research side, this included establishing Tasseled's voice and tone, creating and maintaining a terminology list, conducting messaging and usability tests, and creating marketing assets for their launch.

Strategy

The world of college admissions, financial aid, and degree requirements in the United States is both opaque and complicated. For most high school students, navigating concepts like FAFSA, equivalent courses, transfer credit, and articulation agreements is challenging.

As a content designer, one of my first steps was to put together a foundational terminology list to guide content strategy and product design.

For someone who had graduated from college a decade ago, this was an eye-opening experience. For example, qualifying for financial aid often hinged on factors like state residency, the definition of which was not consistent across states. Or, understanding the difference between a "guaranteed transfer program" and "transfer option" could change what colleges a student might want to apply to before the end of their senior year.

With this in mind, we established three guiding design principles:

In our initial discovery research, we spoke to high school students were halfway through their senior year. We realized that many of them had unique struggles while applying for financial aid, such as students with divorced parents or who had parents who were non-US citizens with no social security.

We used these insights to create an onboarding flow that would address each student's individual situation and allow them to customize a college plan best suited for their college goals and financial aid needs.

Throughout the design process, we constantly tested and iterated our content to answer key questions that students had about Tasseled, as well as ensure that the language used throughout the website and product was clear and helpful.

Outcome

After a year of design and development, Tasseled was launched in Q1 of 2022, just after early decision results and before regular decision results were sent out to students.

Within the first month, Tasseled had over 1,000 users who had signed up — some creating college plans that put them on track to save as much as $50,000 on their degree, while others who didn't get into their goal school were able to plan an alternative path as a transfer student in the future without losing credits or spending more money.

The collective response from users was that Tasseled was a product that anyone who wanted to go to college could benefit from, with many asking if the team could introduce it to their high schools.

Tasseled is currently pursuing partnerships with high schools across the country for guidance counselors to help their students plan for college. The team is also in talks with community colleges and scholarship and grant providers to allow students to apply to schools and for financial aid directly in Tasseled.