Bulk Ordering & Shopping Cart Experience
Product Design, UX Design, UI Design, Visual Design,
Accessibility, User Testing, User Surveys, AI,
Cross-Function Collaboration
College Board
Designing a scalable ordering workflow
that allowed enrollment teams to manage up to 15 search orders simultaneously while reducing complexity and improving
order management.
Role: Senior Product Designer, end-to-end ownership.
Partnered with: Engineering, QA, Content, Accessibility, PM, UX Research, Stakeholders, Users
Scope: End-to-end product design, UX strategy, workflow restructuring, specs, prototyping, research synthesis
Timeline: 4 months
The Problem
The Opportunity
The original Student Search experience was optimized for purchasing a single search at a time. While this supported straightforward transactions, it didn't reflect how enrollment teams actually planned recruitment throughout the year.
Admissions professionals routinely create multiple searches targeting different student populations. Purchasing each search individually introduced repetitive workflows, fragmented order management, and unnecessary administrative effort.
Rather than designing a separate bulk-ordering product, we explored how the existing Student Search experience could evolve into a more scalable ordering system while remaining familiar to existing users.
Designing a Flexible Ordering Experience
Instead of introducing a dedicated bulk-order workflow, I extended the existing ordering experience into a persistent shopping cart that allowed users to progressively build recruitment campaigns.
Users could begin from multiple entry points—including the dashboard, recent searches, or Student Search—and seamlessly combine searches into a single order without interrupting their workflow.
The experience introduced:
Persistent shopping cart
Support for up to 15 search orders
Shared order configuration
Order prioritization
Draft saving
Consolidated checkout
Reduce duplicate work
Prepare the platform for future ordering capabilities
Goal
Experience Walk-Through
Outcome
The redesigned ordering experience transformed Student Search from a transaction-based workflow into a scalable planning tool.
The solution enabled enrollment teams to:
Build recruitment campaigns over time rather than in a single session by 24%.
Consolidate up to 15 individual searches into one submission.
Reduce repetitive checkout workflows by 15%.
Continue adding searches without disrupting existing work.
Manage annual recruitment efforts through one consistent ordering experience.
By extending an existing workflow instead of introducing a separate application, the experience remained familiar for existing customers while creating a foundation for future ordering capabilities.
Reflection
This project reinforced that scaling enterprise products isn't about adding more screens—it's about redesigning workflows to support how customers actually work.
The biggest challenge wasn't creating a shopping cart.
It was balancing flexibility, technical constraints, and long-term platform scalability while ensuring the experience remained approachable for users managing increasingly complex recruitment strategies.
Outcome
Building a Bulk OrdeR
Users can begin from the dashboard by selecting multiple previously created searches and adding them to a single bulk order. Rather than checking out after each search, enrollment teams can organize and review multiple recruitment campaigns before submitting a consolidated order.
gROWING THE ORDER
As users continue creating new Student Searches, completed searches can be added directly into the existing bulk order. This allows recruitment teams to build campaigns incrementally over time without restarting the ordering process or losing context.