Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre
How might we create equity and open opportunities for every student applying for tertiary education in Victoria?
Role
Lead Experience Designer
Industry
Education
Duration
4 months
Overview
The Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC) manages course applications, scholarships, and the Special Entry Access Scheme for universities, TAFEs, and independent colleges across Victoria. Between 60,000 and 70,000 students apply each year, but the platform they navigated had become unnecessarily complex, inflexible, and confusing over time.
I led the UX/UI design stream across a discovery and design engagement to reimagine the student application experience, expose the structural inequities in the existing process, and give VTAC a validated direction for the next phase of development.
The challenge
For students wanting to enrol in a course, access special consideration, and compete for a scholarship, the system required three entirely separate forms. Each meant locating it independently, understanding eligibility criteria on its own, re-entering personal details, and submitting as a standalone task. For anyone already navigating difficult circumstances, that sequence was an invisible barrier at exactly the wrong moment.
Around 95% of applicants were unaware the Special Entry Access Scheme existed. Approximately 20% were missing scholarship opportunities they qualified for — not because they were ineligible, but because the platform never told them.
My role
I led the entire UX/UI design stream as part of a team of six. The work ran the full arc: facilitating 1:1 stakeholder interviews, running alignment workshops, producing page flows and wireframes, and delivering a high-fidelity clickable prototype. I also facilitated the key decision session that determined the product direction for the next phase of the program, bringing all stakeholder groups into the same room to work through trade-offs together — for many, the first time they had done so.
Understanding the landscape
Discovery interviews
Before any design work began, I conducted four 1:1 interviews with the people closest to the existing system: the officer overseeing all student application types, the team member responsible for question content and structure, the assessor evaluating submissions, and the administrator managing the backend systems.
Each stakeholder understood their own domain well. What none of them had was visibility into how their work connected across teams, or to what students actually experienced on the other side. That absence shaped the research — and made the case for the workshops that followed.
Reimagining the application
With research in hand, I mapped two potential futures to test with stakeholders. The first was a SEAS and scholarship pathway integrated into the course application, where students make an explicit choice to opt in and give informed consent at each step. The second distributed those same questions throughout the general form — cleaner on the surface, but it risked implicit consent, unclear eligibility signalling, and difficulty tracking outcomes cleanly across three streams.
Designing the experience
The decision that changed direction
I facilitated two alignment workshops where working through the trade-offs together made the choice clear. VTAC moved forward with the SEAS and scholarship pathway. The opt-in model respected student agency, gave assessors cleaner data trails, and created a defined moment for eligible students to understand and claim the support available to them.
The unified application
The resulting experience brings course application, SEAS eligibility assessment, and scholarship pathway into a single connected structure. Students fill in their information once. The system uses that data to assess eligibility automatically and prompts them to opt into relevant pathways at the right moment.
Page flows mapped the complete journey across all applicant profiles: domestic and international, students with medical conditions, those from financially disadvantaged backgrounds, and applicants managing difficult personal circumstances.
High-fidelity prototype
A clickable prototype brought the full experience to life, including dynamically personalised pages surfacing relevant courses based on each student's profile, automatic eligibility checking across special consideration categories, and a status tracker keeping applicants informed throughout.
The equity case
Students who qualify for SEAS or scholarships are now prompted at the right moment, inside the application they are already completing. No separate form to locate. No eligibility criteria to decode on their own. That single structural shift is what addresses the 95% who were unaware, and closes the gap for the 20% missing out on support they were entitled to.
Validation
The prototype was presented directly to the CEO of VTAC and received strong positive feedback across all stakeholder groups. VTAC approved the direction and initiated a tender process for the next phase of development.
The transparency of working on a shared virtual board during the alignment workshops surfaced team silos that had previously gone unexamined, and opened substantive conversations about what the system actually needed to do for students and the business alike.
"Some team members specifically called out the workshops that you ran and commented how much they liked the approach and felt that they were able to make good contributions as a result."
— Frances Kirby, Project Manager, Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre
Impact
Before
60,000 - 70,000 students annually navigating a fragmented, three-form process. 95% unaware of the support available to them. 20% missing scholarship opportunities they qualified for.
After
A validated, CEO-endorsed design direction for a unified application experience that surfaces eligibility automatically, reduces student effort by over an hour, and gives VTAC a clear, technically feasible path to implementation.
Reduced ~30%
In application processing time
> 2hrs saved
Per application in manual checks
15% increase
Projected in SEAS and scholarship uptake
> 45mins
Saved in filling only one application form
"You have done an outstanding job, and the feedback from the client has been consistently excellent throughout the engagement. Congratulations on delivering such high quality outputs and the manner in which you engaged with VTAC."
— Josh Teichman, Engagement Partner, PwC