Asian Student Achievement Coaching

Turning manual scheduling into a seamless coaching experience

What?

A streamlined 1:1 coaching booking system integrated into Asian Student Achievement's WordPress site.

For who?

College students and early-career professionals seeking mentorship, and volunteer coaches managing their appointments and availability.

My role

UX/Web Design Intern responsible for research, platform selection, integration, testing, and implementation.

Project duration

1 year

Tools

Figma

WordPress

Why this matters

For Asian Student Achievement (ASA), 1:1 coaching is a cornerstone to their mission to support Asian/Asian-American students and young professionals. They were previously managing coaching sessions with Google Forms, which created friction at the most critical touchpoint: connecting students with mentors. Without a smoother system, ASA risked losing engagement and overburdening its staff.

What ASA needs

A booking platform seamlessly integrated into their WordPress site that could:

  • Automate scheduling and reduce admin overhead

  • Give clients a clear, self-service way to book coaching sessions

  • Empower coaches to manage availability and requests on their own

  • Scale with ASA's growing community and coaching demand

The solution

I designed and implemented an integrated booking system that connects ASA's community with coaches in just a few clicks.

  • Integrated entry point: Clear gateway for ASA's 1:1 coaching program, guiding students directly to book sessions.

    • Strengthened ASA's coaching visibility as a core service

    • Reduced drop-off by making session booking the clear next step.

  • Simple, self-service scheduling: Step-by-step form for students to choose a focus, pick a time, and confirm details.

    • Eliminated manual Google Form sign-ups

    • Gave students instant booking confirmation without admin back-and-forth

  • Self-managed scheduling: Secure portal where coaches manage their appointments and track sessions.

    • Empowered coaches to control their calendars

    • Reduced ASA's administrative workload by automating scheduling

How I Did It

Goals and Guidelines

Streamline booking for students

Make it simple and intuitive for students to find a coach and schedule a session without administrative delays.

Empower coaches to self-manage

Provide coaches with a secure portal to update availability, view bookings, and track sessions, shifting scheduling ownership to coaches and reducing ASA's administrative workload.

Integrate seamlessly into ASA's existing site.

Ensure the booking system fit naturally intro ASA's existing WordPress site so staff could be maintained and remain sustainable beyond my internship.

Balance professionalism and accessibility

Design an experience that felt professional and trustworthy while remaining welcoming to early-career users who might be booking a coaching session for the first time.

Competitive Analysis

I compared three WordPress-compatible booking plugins to identify which could best support ASA's coaching program. The main priorities were enabling clients to upload resumes, giving coaches visibility into pending requests, and ensuring long-term affordability.

Why Amelia was the best choice

  • File upload/resume submission is not something WP Booking Calendar (WPBC) or Simply Schedule (SS) clearly supported out of the box.

  • Manual approval/pending status workflows are either missing or less robust in SS and WPBC, but are built-in for Amelia.

  • While SS and WPBC do well for easy embed, calendar display, availability notifications, and other features, they fall short on the dual-audience (client + coach) needs without extra work or add-ons.

  • Cost vs benefit: To get all the needed features with WPBC or SS, ASA would need to pay more, configure more, or possibly integrate third-party plugins or custom development. Amelia offered the full feature set more cleanly.

System Flow

To ensure the platform met both client and coach needs, I mapped the end-to-end system and detailed booking flow. These diagrams clarified how Amelia would automate confirmations, reduce ASA's manual workload, and capture the right information upfront to set more productive coaching sessions.

  • System flow: Mapped client, coach, and ASA interactions into one automated system, reducing manual scheduling and ensuring confirmations happen instantly.

  • Booking flow: Structured the booking journey to capture the right details (resume, focus area, contact info, etc.) upfront, giving coaches context and saving ASA staff admin time.

Designing the Experience

With the system mapped, I moved into visualizing the experience. Starting with Figma wireframes, I explored how ASA's coaching program could be presented clearly, then translated these drafts into WordPress to validate how the content and booking flow would come together on the live site.

Wireframes

The wireframes established the foundation of the coaching platform, outlining a client-facing landing page, a step-by-step form that captured all required information, and a coach's portal concept for managing appointments and resources. These low-fidelity drafts allowed ASA to visualize the structure early and give feedback before I moved into implementation.

  • Landing page: Shows introduction of coaching program, basic information about coaches, and the booking form.

  • Booking form (1st step): Client chooses a coaching topic.

  • Booking form (2nd step): Client chooses a date and time for their coaching session.

  • Booking form (2rd step): Client puts personal information (name, contact information, etc.) and other important information for the session.

Main Page

Translating the wireframes into WordPress, I designed the landing page to combine storytelling and function. It highlighted ASA's mission, introduced available coaches, and integrated the booking form at the bottom of the page. This helped students understand the value of coaching before taking action, while keeping the flow to booking seamless.

Coach's Portal

For the coach's side, I drafted a portal where volunteers could log in, manage their sessions, and access shared resources. By drafting this layout in advance, ASA could envision how their internal workflows would be supported, making it easier to align on what functionality mattered most for coaches.

Usability Testing

To validate the system, I tested the booking flow with both 5 ASA interns (clients) and 4 staff/board members (coaches). Each group completed real booking and scheduling tasks, while I observed ease of use and captured pain points.

Testing confirmed that the system successfully replaced ASA's Google Form process while surfacing high-level improvements. These insights directly informed design changes that made the booking platform more transparent, reliable, and easy to adopt for both clients and coaches.

Learnings From Clients

  • Booking was straightforward: Clients quickly located coaching topics and successfully scheduled sessions.

  • Email automations worked reliably, giving them confidence their requests were received.

  • Cancellations caused confusion: The system gave them no immediate confirmation that an appointment was actually cancelled.

  • Some coaching topics were unclear, discouraging clients from booking sessions for topics they did not fully understand.

Learnings From Coaches

  • Automated emails were essential, helping coaches access login credentials and appointment details without friction.

  • The default dashboard view often hid upcoming appointments outside the visible date range, adding an extra step to managing schedules.

  • Readability issues in the dashboard UI slowed navigation (later resolved with a plugin update).

How Testing Shaped Iteration

Added a cancellation confirmation flow to reduce client uncertainty when cancelling appointments.

Revised coaching topic titles to be clearer, more relevant, and more approachable.

Introduced a standard operating guide to help coaches find upcoming sessions faster.

Adjusted UI readability and default views to make appointment management more intuitive.

Final Design

Main Page

The final landing page consolidated ASA's coaching program into a clear, professional entry point. Instead of the old Google Form link, clients can now view coach profiles, understand coaching topics, and seamlessly book a session in one flow. By structuring the page around clarity and trust, the design increased discoverability of coaching services and gave clients more confidence in the program.

Coach's Portal

For the coaches, the new portal streamlined scheduling and reduced administrative overhead. Appointment requests, resumes, and client details are accessible in one place, eliminating the scattered communication that previously slowed down the process. With availability management and appointment tracking built into the portal, ASA's volunteer coaches gained a tool that supported their contributions without adding extra burden.

Reflection

The ASA booking platform was my first end-to-end project where I owned the full design process from initial research through implementation and launch. Working closely with ASA, I learned how to balance usability with business needs and how to navigate collaboration when stakeholder and user perspectives didn't always align.

Through this experience, I learned the importance of…

  • Choosing scalable solutions that fit within existing systems (like WordPress integration)

  • Designing for two distinct user groups (clients and volunteer coaches) and ensuring a seamless experience for both

  • Iterating quickly based on testing insights to reduct confusion and strengthen trust in the system

This project gave me the confidence to lead future projects with a systems-first mindset, building tools that not only solve immediate pain points but can grow with the organization. More importantly, it reinforced how meaningful it is to design solutions that are launched and used in the real world, creating measurable impact for both clients and stakeholders.

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