Making affordable MCAT prep easier to navigate for pre-meds.
IFD delivers affordable, comprehensive MCAT prep, but students struggled to understand their options and commit. I redesigned the site to clarify program offerings and created a guided dashboard, increasing user confidence and conversions.
Problem
IFD offers quality, affordable, and comprehensive MCAT prep options created by top-scoring physicians, yet sign-ups and guide purchases remained low.
Solution
A clearer structure for IFD’s offerings, improved study-plan usability, and key insights to inform future product decisions.
Outcome
100% task completion
8.8 out of 10 satisfaction
Role
UX/UI Designer (end-to-end)
Timeline
3 Weeks
Key Insights from User Research
User interviews with prospective students revealed three core challenges behind their hesitation and clarified what we needed to address in IFD’s program.
01
Overwhelming and unstructured content
Students felt lost about where to start, what to prioritize, and how to break the MCAT into manageable steps.
02
High cost of reputable resources & quality of free resources
Premium tools felt out of reach, and even affordable options created uncertainty about whether they were “enough.”
03
Clairy on progress
Students wanted practice tests with explanations, insights into strengths/weaknesses, and clear indicators of improvement.
Translating Insights into Design Direction
Affinity mapping
Using affinity mapping, I organized the interview insights into clear themes. This helped validate the three core challenges, identify five key themes, and prioritize the most critical issues shaping the direction of IFD’s MCAT offerings and program structure.
Resource Effectiveness
Cost and Accessibility
Burnout and Stress
Structure and Guidance
Peer and Community Support
User personas
With these themes in place, I created user personas to represent the students behind the data and guide the design decisions that followed.
Persona Archetype 1: Avery (Anxious Exam Prepper)
Persona Archetype 2 : Jordan (Efficiency-Driven Learner)
Improved Site Map
This site map creates a clear, intuitive structure that reduces cognitive load and supports confident enrollment decisions. It ensures that program options, study tools, and value propositions are easy to find and understand.
Site Map
Key Flows Mapped
I created task flows to map how students move through the IFD experience, from discovering programs to signing up and accessing their study dashboard. These flows ensure that every step feels intuitive, reduces friction, and supports confident decision making.
User and Task Flows
Exploring Structure
I began with low and mid fidelity wireframes to quickly test different layout ideas for the dashboard, study plan, and program pages. The goal was to focus on structure, hierarchy, and user flow without getting distracted by visual styling.
Wireframes
3 solutions that address the three core challenges
01
Less guessing, more clarity: a guided study dashboard
Students needed structure and accountability to stay on track. I created a dashboard centered on a weekly study plan that turns prep into clear, manageable steps, supported by progress tracking that drives consistency and measurable progress.
02
Making value visible: transparent offerings and real results
Affordable tools often feel “too good to be true.” To build trust, I created visual summaries of what’s included in each program and how IFD measures up to costly competitors, supported by real student testimonials that highlight successful outcomes and strengthen confidence.
03
Progress you can see, improvement you can trust
To give students clearer visibility into their progress, I created a dashboard with a streak tracker for consistency, progress indicators for momentum, and a score tracker that highlights improvement. This helps students stay motivated and understand exactly where to focus next.
Validating what works and revealing what to improve
Usability testing validated that students could complete the two most important actions on the platform with ease and confidence.
Sign up for free MCAT program
Purchase product
Performance metrics
100% task completion - All participants successfully signed up for the free program, opened the lesson plan, and purchased a guide.
8.8 out of 10 satisfaction - Students consistently described the platform as clean and easy to navigate.
Key Insights That Shaped the Next Iteration
Pricing clarity needed improvement: Users wanted program pricing and “Free Program” labels surfaced earlier on key pages.
Sections needed stronger visual hierarchy: Some pages blended together and needed better contrast and spacing.
Easier navigation: Users wanted an easier way to navigate between key pages
© 2026 Suzanne Tsukenjo