California College Promise Grant (CCPT)
Project Overview
SUBJECT
Financial Aid
METHOD
Survey, Design Sprint, Usability Testing
How a redesigned application makes financial aid more accessible for over one million students.
Objective
When the path to financial aid is confusing, students risk missing out on opportunities and support they need to succeed. That’s why the Student Centered Design Lab partnered with the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office to reimagine the California College Promise Grant financial aid application, specifically aiming to:
- Remove unnecessary obstacles in the application experience
- Increase overall student participation and completion rates
- Increase the total state financial aid dollars awarded to eligible students
“If there were more documents like that, simple, straight to the point, I feel like a lot of people would submit their documents on time instead of waiting until the last minute, or not even doing it at all.”
Background
Minimizing Barriers to Financial Aid
The California College Promise Grant (CCPG) offers a tuition and fee waiver to low-income students and students with special classifications across 116 California community colleges. Each year, more than one million students, nearly half of all California community college students, rely on CCPG to pursue their career goals. With so many students relying on this vital resource, the application process itself must be clear, accessible, and built around the student perspective.
Compton College
Process
Centering the Student Experience
To ensure the redesign reflected real student needs, the SCDL team engaged 24 students directly in the process. A design sprint brought together a grant recipient, financial aid experts, and inclusion-focused specialists from FoundationCCC. Students shared videos describing the challenges they faced with the application, giving the team direct insight into barriers. This inclusive approach, rooted in lived experience, led to the co-creation of a high-fidelity, clickable prototype designed with and for students.
Testing and Feedback
Next, the team worked with students to test the prototype against the current application, comparing clarity, completion time, and overall ease. Feedback from 24 students, 80 financial aid staff, and statewide administrators shaped the redesign, ensuring the new application is simpler, faster, and more supportive of student success.
Design
Creating a Student-Friendly Application
Research findings directly shaped the prototype’s iterative design. The team streamlined the application from four pages to two, simplifying language and layout to remove unnecessary steps and make the process easier for students to complete.
Results
Students Validate a Better Experience
The redesigned application outperformed the current version across every metric. Students completed it in nearly half the time and described the experience as “simple, helpful, organized, and user-friendly.”
“I had the pleasure and benefit of working with the Student Centered Design Lab team. They did a phenomenal job leading this project, gathering a dedicated and diverse design team, and producing a product that can greatly enhance the student experience at a California community college