Modernizing

Mongoose

Project Summary

Mongoose is a desktop application used by colleges and universities to communicate with prospective and current students through SMS, Chat, and WhatsApp, with a focus on AI-assisted conversations, and campaign automation.

Over several years, the platform expanded from a messaging tool into a comprehensive engagement platform. While functionality grew, the user experience did not. The navigation became increasingly difficult to scale, and the dashboard no longer surfaced the information users needed to take action quickly.

Timeline

9 - 12 months

Role

Senior UX / Product Designer

Teams

UX & Product Design

Marketing & Communications

Engineering

Revenue and Sales

“

It's been a very helpful tool reminding our clientele of their upcoming appointments. Our No Shows numbers are much lower and we have better communication with our appointments.

Mongoose User - Enrollment

The Challenge

The existing experience reflected years of incremental feature additions rather than a cohesive product strategy.

Users experienced:

  • Navigation that became harder to navigate with every new feature.

  • A dashboard focused on reporting rather than actionable insights.

  • Little visual hierarchy.

  • Long menus requiring excessive scanning.

  • Too many clicks to accomplish common tasks.

  • Limited accessibility.

  • Inconsistent UI patterns across the application.

Customer feedback consistently reflected these frustrations.

"It seems a little clunky with too many screens to click on before sending my message."

"It is confusing to use... I'd opt for a more user-friendly platform."

"Overall, I like Mongoose... the app needs more functionality."

Rather than adding new functionality, the opportunity was to make existing capabilities easier to discover and use.

Business Objectives

The redesign aimed to accomplish more than a visual refresh.

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Improve Productivity
Help university staff complete common communication tasks faster.

Prepare for Product Growth
Create a scalable navigation capable of supporting future AI products and integrations.

Modernize the Experience
Position Mongoose as an innovative platform while maintaining familiarity for long-time customers.

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Increase Feature Adoption
Expose powerful tools that many users didn't realize existed.

Improve Accessibility
Design a WCAG-compliant interface that reduced cognitive load and supported keyboard navigation.