VisaMadeEasy - AI Student Visa Support
Turned scattered visa requirements into an organized, AI-powered process
Role
Product Designer
Team
1 Designer, 5 Engineers, 1 Product Manager
Tools
Figma
Duration
8 weeks
Product snapshot
Seemlessly request AI assistant to answer visa questions and create task checklist.
Background
Students preparing to study abroad face a complex, confusing, and time-consuming application process.
As an international student myself, I have personally experienced the lengthy visa application process with numerous rounds of document submission. These requirements result in wasted time, missed deadlines, and reduced confidence in the application process for many students.
Research
I conducted 3 semi-structured interviews with international students who had recently navigated visa applications to the US, UK, and Australia.
I designed the interviews with two goals:
Capturing lived experiences applying for visas in different countries
to identify common pain points from a variety of study destinations.
Balancing breadth and depth
starting with broad questions about their visa journey, then narrowing into challenges with documents, deadlines, and information sources.
I chose not to interview visa agents or university advisors at this stage. Their perspective would be valuable for v2, but I needed to understand the unfiltered student experience first: the workarounds, the Reddit threads at 2am, the panic when forms didn't match what they expected.
Key findings
The interviews surfaced 4 recurring struggles. We accepted the risk and prioritized speed over completeness.
Solving all four needs would mean building a financial document generator, a policy change tracker, a moderated community, and a behavioral accountability system.
That's a 12-month roadmap, and students needed help now.
As a result, we focused on providing reliable guidance and structured organization for immigration requirements because these were:
The highest anxiety drivers (students fear getting rejected for wrong info)
Solvable without complex fintech integrations
The problem
How might we provide reliable guidance and structured organization to help students prepare their study abroad applications?
Ideating features
I worked with the product manager to draft a backlog of features, prioritizing those with high impact for users.
Based on research, I defined three main objectives for the product:
Clarity: Provide accurate, trustworthy immigration information.
Organization: Help students structure and track documents.
Timeliness: Keep students on schedule with reminders and progress tracking.
After brainstorming ideas with team members, we decided to develop an AI-powered management tool that organizes documents and deadlines in one place, powered by a chatbot that provides accurate, updated immigration guidance.
Compared to a traditional information-sharing forum, this product directly addresses information accuracy and organization for users, while keeping the experience simple and intuitive.
What we accepted
After narrowing our focus to an AI-powered management tool, we intentionally left out these factors:
💰 Financial documents would stay manual
users prep them outside the tool, we just guide what to gather
👥 No community features in v1
we'd be the reliable alternative to Facebook groups, not a replacement for them
🔥 Motivation still depends on the user
we'd reduce confusion, not force compliance
By narrowing scope, we could ship a working product in 3 months instead of chasing feature parity with 10 different tools.
The bet: if we solve clarity and organization well enough, students will tolerate handling finances and deadlines elsewhere.
Low-fidelity
I started with rough sketches to visualize how the features would interact with each other.
Design system
I developed a scalable design system that maintained visual consistency across the product while accelerating engineering workflows.
By establishing reusable components and clear documentation, I ensured our branding remained cohesive throughout all screens and enabled engineers to build faster with pre-defined, production-ready elements.
Multilingual design
As the product expands in scope, I created multilingual microcopies while ensuring clarity and cohesion.
I adapted the product experience for international markets by crafting English microcopy that preserved the intent and clarity of the original Vietnamese content. This expansion required balancing localization nuances with our core UX principles, ensuring every user, regardless of language, received the same intuitive, cohesive experience.
Pivoting to a De-coupled Experience
The engineering team initially couldn’t build the connection between task management and AI chat responses.
Therefore, we focused on providing separated checklist and guidance first, accepting that organization would be manual at launch.
Final Design Solution
VisaMadeEasy - An AI-powered management platform that guides students from immigration questions to organized tasks for visa application.
Dashboard
Provides quick access to recent chats and upcoming tasks.
Direct access to AI chatbot for timely assistance.
Immigration Support Chatbot
Dedicated flows for guests and registered users.
Answers questions with government-sourced data.
Explains complex requirements in plain language.
→ Make immigration information approachable & reliable.
Application Task & Progress Tracker
AI assistance generates a categorized list of required documents tailored to visa type.
Reminders tied to submission deadlines.
→ Reduce procrastination and avoid missing deadlines
Allows students to mark completed items and export as a PDF.
→ Keep everything in one place for students, parents, and consultants
Reflection & What I'd do differently
Designing for high-stakes administrative hurdles isn't just about organizing data; it’s about managing user anxiety.
🧩 Don’t let segmentation become a "dead end"
I focused heavily on categorizing students by the countries they are applying visas for, but later realized I didn't fully account for students whose destination countries are not yet supported.
In the future, I would design a flex-flow for edge cases that still offers value (like a general document checklist) even if we can't provide a 100% tailored path.
🔐 Trust is a functional requirement, not a visual one
Visa applications involve the most sensitive data a student has. In retrospect, I could have done more to visually communicate security at the point of upload.
In future projects, I would iterate on the document upload component to include clearer encryption signifiers or "Verified" states to provide the emotional reassurance needed when handling sensitive personal info.
📖 The Checklist Paradox: Progress vs. Overwhelm
I designed the checklist to be comprehensive to ensure accuracy, but later realized that seeing 20+ pending tasks at once could cause action paralysis for users.
If I were to take this forward, I’d test progressive disclosure — showing only the current phase of the visa process (e.g., Pre-Interview) rather than the entire roadmap from day 1—to keep the user focused on the next step rather than the final step.
While this project began as a challenge to streamline a complex information architecture, it evolved into a lesson on empathy-driven design. I learned that for a platform like VisaMadeEasy, success isn't just measured by a completed application; it's measured by the student's confidence throughout the process.
Moving forward, I’ll continue to prioritize "calm technology" that turns overwhelming bureaucratic obstacles into manageable, bite-sized milestones.