Next steps cards
Users did not just want the next instruction in their enrolment journey. They wanted a clear view of the road ahead. The experience had to make a complicated process feel manageable while still fitting the constraints of a real product.
Role: UX Writer, Guild
The Context
Guild provides education benefits to employees who are going back to school for low or no tuition.
Enrollment processes varied by school and funding method. Without personalized guidance, members struggled to enroll and start school, and many turned to member support.
Guild’s old Next Steps cards provided sparse, boilerplate information.
What I Did
I worked with the product designer to map the journey for each persona and funding type. We interviewed product owners, member-services specialists, and other partners to identify user needs at each step. I added actions, target emotions, helpful resources, and draft guidance.
Testing showed that members wanted to see multiple steps at once and organize the work into a larger number of clearly defined chunks.
Members wanted clear visibility into what was coming next. A majority preferred seeing six steps at once rather than a shorter view.
In desktop testing, 74% preferred the layout that showed more of the journey at once.
Testing compared how much of the enrollment journey members wanted to see at one time.
The selected direction organized work into clearer chunks and made future steps easier to anticipate.
Challenges I Faced
The strongest test direction called for more visible steps and more motivational content. UI and engineering constraints required two changes:
The extra content I had written to reinforce emotional targets had to be pulled back.
The maximum number of visible steps had to be reduced from six to four.
The work became an exercise in preserving clarity and momentum within a tighter interface.
The production design reduced the visible journey to four steps while preserving clear actions and urgency cues.
The End Result
The completed Next Steps cards delivered clear, actionable, personalized guidance at each stage of enrollment. The system used strong CTAs, time tags to communicate urgency, and validated copy that balanced information with motivation. The content pattern could adapt across different schools, programs, and funding requirements without losing clarity.
The final content system covered the broader tuition-assistance journey, not only a single next action.
Personalized cards adjusted the next action, supporting information, and CTA to the member’s program and status.
The reusable framework accommodated different schools and funding requirements without changing the underlying content pattern.
A clear application step and visible support path handled another point in the member journey.