DATE
MAR 2025 - SEPT 2025
COMPANY
ARROWSTER
TEAM
1 PRODUCT DESIGNER - 5 ENGINEERS - 1 PM
STATUS
IN PRODUCTION
TABLE OF CONTENTS
My role
Sole product designer. I ran user research, wireframes, hi-fi prototypes, user testing, and the final product.
At a glance
At a glance
Cut 15+ spreadsheets and 7+ tools down to 2 platforms, saving counselors 5+ hours of manual work each week.
Replaced a 20-step checklist with 7 focused AI agents, so students know where to start.
Built the platform that now supports 1,000+ students and helped Arrowster raise $5M+.
This case study covers the foundation of Arrowster's internal tool. Click here to see how I later redesigned the AI research agents in V2.0.
Before: The process is completely manual, with email automation. Most student information was input by hand to spreadsheets
After: The Sale process is done within an CRM, while the main platform to communicate between counselor and students are created in-house
I.
BACKGROUND
A study abroad agency run by people who've actually studied abroad
Traditional study abroad agencies rely on salespeople with little real experience to guide students through one of the biggest decisions of their lives. Arrowster flips that model: students are guided by counselors who have studied and worked abroad themselves.
My task
I joined as the sole product designer when Arrowster knew customer success was its next priority but didn't know where to start. There was no design process, no product direction, and nothing to build from.
My job was to find the biggest pain points for students and counselors, then design one platform both could rely on every day.
II.
RESEARCH
To find where things broke down, I spent two weeks with 20+ students and 3 counselors, using:
In-depth interviews with students and counselors
Focus groups with high school students
Workflow observation: watching counselors track and message students day to day
The same problem showed up on both sides: too many scattered pieces, and no clear path through them.
Key insights
INSIGHT #1
Counselors were buried in spreadsheets
The team used 15+ spreadsheets with hundreds of tabs, plus separate tools for forms, files, and emails. Each counselor had their own system, and data entry and status updates alone took 7+ hours a week per counselor.
Every day when I wake up, I have this constant fear that I might have missed a student's important deadline.
— Hayden, counselor
INSIGHT #2
Students were lost in a 20-step checklist
Sophie AI guided students with a checklist of 20+ steps, from career guidance to visa applications, all shown at once. Students felt overwhelmed and didn't know which steps applied to them, so most never used most features.
IV.
SOLUTION
Counselors tracked leads, student details, and application status across 15+ Google Sheets. Forms came in through Tally, files lived in Google Drive, and Zapier sent basic emails. As Arrowster added more students and counselors, this would only get worse.
I brought everything into two tools, each with a clear job:
Zoho CRM for counselors: leads, student records, and application status in one place. [What you set up, e.g. custom fields, pipelines, deadline reminders.]
The Arrowster platform for students: onboarding and application support, connected to the CRM so counselors don't re-enter data.
AI automation: [what's automated, e.g. status updates, deadline alerts, follow-up emails], so counselors spend time with students instead of on data entry.
Since every student's journey is different, I kept the flow simple and flexible instead of forcing one fixed step-by-step process.
V.
ITERATIONS
I sketched several ways to organize the agents and reviewed them with the team to spot problems early.
Preliminary research includes many separate agents, which confused and overwhelmed students
What’s new on the result page
Answers based on Arrowster’s own data. Results draw on past accepted students, similar student profiles, and average living costs obtained from real cases. This gives students the specific advice they asked for in research, not general answers they could get from any chatbot.
Suggested next questions. Each answer ends with follow-up questions that fit the result, so students always know what to ask next and don’t hit a dead end.
Cards instead of long text. Key information is shown in clickable cards with sources, so students can scan it quickly and dig deeper on what interests them.
IX.
MY LESSONS
Design isn't only for designers
There was no design process to inherit, so I had to find the right tools and ways of working with a small team. What worked wasn't the same for everyone. It took watching, patience, and a lot of trial and error.
Don't default to the open chat box
In a small team, the most useful thing I could do was create space for honest talks about vision, goals, and real problems, not just hand over screens.