Transforming the End-to-End EF Customer Experience
EF Education First | Zürich, Switzerland
Goal
To design an end-to-end experience that drives bookings and long-term engagement by giving parents and kids the confidence to book their trip abroad.
My role
I led research and design efforts, collaborating closely with a multidisciplinary team, including designers, developers, a creative director, a product manager, videographers, and UX writers.
Impact
The new digital experience inspired students and parents to confidently book language courses. My work influenced EF’s strategic direction, leading to key hires, improved customer engagement, faster response times, and decision-making clarity.
From the research, I collaborated with a videographer to create an emotionally resonant video showcasing what happens when parents send their child on an EF trip. I conducted all on-camera interviews, storyboarded the narrative, directed editing changes, and launched the video on the product website.
Where we started
User challenges:
Pre-booking: Users struggled to find relevant, inspiring content, relying on stock photography and generic messaging that failed to connect with kids and their parents.
Post-booking: Engagement dropped, with missed opportunities to build loyalty and satisfaction.
Internal challenges:
Operational inefficiencies delayed customer communication. Tools and processes didn’t fully support decision-making clarity.
Our first steps
To address challenges and align EF’s digital experience with both user and business needs, we:
Persuaded senior leadership to adopt authentic, user-centered content.
Analyzed sales data to set clear goals and identify key markets.
Conducted interviews with students, parents, and internal teams to uncover their experiences and needs.
Led collaborative workshops with marketing, sales, and customer service teams to:
Create a Customer Journey Map that highlighted pain points and opportunities for students and parents.
Develop a Service Blueprint to align internal teams, streamline operations, and address inefficiencies affecting the customer experience.
Mapping
1. Customer Journey Map
We mapped the journey from inspiration to post-booking, uncovering key insights:
Frustrations: Users faced unclear information during the decision-making process, leading to hesitation.
Opportunities: Engagement gaps were identified after booking, during the trip, and after returning home, presenting opportunities to strengthen loyalty and satisfaction.
These findings shaped our priorities for content, communication, and product improvements, ensuring a more seamless and engaging user experience.
Customer journey map blurred to protect company confidentiality
2. Service Blueprint
The service blueprint aligned user-facing interactions with internal operations, revealing:
Operational inefficiencies like delayed parental notifications after a student’s arrival.
This work influenced the hiring of a VP of Customer Experience to streamline processes and improve touchpoints.
Design process
Designed content from sketches to wireframes and mockups, based on user research, with a focus on clear storytelling, authenticity, and compelling visuals to inspire and inform students and parents.
Early phase prototype
Delivering on strategy: redesigning the booking flow
Problem
The booking flow was hidden in a hamburger menu and cluttered with dropdowns, leading to confusion and high drop-off rates.
Leadership was worried that changes would hurt conversion. Instead, EF prioritized a separate price quote tool over the booking flow.
Through user research and analytics, we made the case that pricing should be integrated directly into the booking experience to build trust and improve clarity.
I led the redesign from discovery through delivery, exploring multiple versions and collaborating with product and engineering to deliver a cleaner, more transparent flow.
Our first steps
Assess current sales and analytics data to establish clear goals and metrics.
Understand key markets and their current sales strategies and pain points.
Gain a deeper understanding of the needs of kids and parents when booking online.
Discovery
In research, I set aside all of our technical and political constraints and asked simply: when the student is ready to book, what does she want to do first?
Here’s what I did:
Benchmarking: Analyzed competitor booking flows to identify best practices.
User testing: Conducted interviews and concept testing with students and parents throughout the design process, and iterated on the design based on the feedback.
This question and further research led me through several sketches and booking flow iterations, three of which I prototyped and tested.
Concept 1: Choosing course dates via a calendar, then selecting a course
Concept 2: Choosing a course, then selecting dates via a calendar
Concept 3: Month-level date selection via buttons instead of calender, then selecting a course
What we decided
We moved forward with a combination of Concept 2 and Concept 3, as they best balanced user needs and business constraints:
Ease of Implementation (Concept 2):
Concept 2 leveraged EF’s existing API, avoiding costly redevelopment.User Preference for Course Selection (Concept 2):
Users preferred starting with course selection. As one participant noted:
“I want to pick my course first, then figure out the dates.”Ease of Date Selection (Concept 3):
Concept 3’s button-based date selection was clearer and easier to use compared to the more rigid and confusing calendar inputs in Concepts 1 and 2. One participant shared:
“It’s easier to choose my options this way.”
Final design
Impact
Launched a new digital experience for EF, featuring rich, authentic content that inspired kids and parents to book language courses abroad.
Presented research and design work to the company President, EVP of Marketing, and other leadership, influencing strategy and shifting focus toward online booking.
Direct outcomes included the hiring of a VP of Customer Experience and a full-time videographer to produce authentic destination content.
Research informed the product roadmap, uncovering new opportunities for design, content, and product improvements.
Results: Three months post-launch, user engagement increased, and response times improved through earlier, more streamlined customer communication by introducing a new chatbot. Customers in a key market also doubled their online bookings within one year. [Read more about the booking flow redesign here.]
