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Jelly Toast
Case Study
Contents
Overview
01
Business Context
02
The Challenge
03
Goals
04
Understanding
05
Key Insights
06
Principles
07
Tradeoffs
08
Final Solution
09
Impact
10
Reflections
11
Designing memories that lasts
Transforming fragmented memories into shared experiences through a playful, end-to-end event platform.
Role
Product Designer
Team
1 Designers Founders
Eng
Platform
Web Application
Industry
Finance
Education
0 → 1
Education financing platform designed end to end
4
Primary stakeholder groups connected
20+
End-to-end workflows defined
Scroll to explore the journey
01 · Project Snapshot
Turning an ambitious vision into a development-ready ecosystem
Education is one of the most important investments a family can make — yet rising school fees have made quality education increasingly difficult to access for middle-class families.
EFG (Ed Fin Grow) was founded with a simple but ambitious vision: make quality education more accessible by removing financial barriers.
“When I joined, there was no product, no workflows, and no validated journeys — only a vision. My role was to transform that into a product ecosystem.”
What the engagement delivered
0 → 1
Education financing platform designed end to end
4
Primary stakeholder groups connected
20+
End-to-end workflows defined
10+
Fintech & insurance products studied
Cross-team
Founders, design & engineering aligned
MVP
Ready product foundation established
02 · Business Context
An opportunity to bridge a widening gap
The cost of quality education keeps rising, making admission to many Tier-1 and Tier-2 schools difficult for middle-class families. EFG's founders saw a chance to bridge this gap — and their vision extended far beyond simply offering loans.
Families
Apply for educational financing through a simple, trustworthy process.
Schools
Participate in verification and approval workflows.
Investors
Contribute to educational opportunities with transparency.
Administrators
Manage and monitor the entire operation.
While the vision was clear, the path to building it was not.
03 · The Challenge
It was never just a loan application
The platform had to support multiple stakeholders, each with different goals, responsibilities, and expectations. The challenge quickly evolved from designing screens to defining how an entire ecosystem should function.
Families wanted a process that felt simple and trustworthy.
Schools needed confidence in verification and documentation workflows.
Investors wanted transparency into opportunities and progress.
Administrators required operational oversight across the ecosystem.
We also had to account for
Loan eligibility requirements
KYC processes
Credit score considerations
Documentation requirements
Approval workflows
Operational constraints
04 · Goals & Success Criteria
Four goals we aligned on before designing
Make financing approachable
The process needed to feel less intimidating for families unfamiliar with financial products.
Create trust across stakeholders
Every participant in the ecosystem needed confidence in the process.
Simplify operational complexity
Multiple steps, approvals and validations had to feel manageable behind the scenes.
Build a scalable foundation
As a 0→1 product, it needed to support growth without a redesign from scratch.
05 · Understanding the Problem
Learning an unfamiliar domain, from the ground up
Education financing involved far more than forms — eligibility rules, credit considerations, KYC regulations, and verification workflows that directly shaped the experience. To build understanding, I:
Researched education financing models
Studied loan qualification requirements
Explored KYC and verification processes
Analyzed fintech and insurance products
Reviewed onboarding flows like PolicyBazaar
Worked with founders on operational realities
The complexity of financing wasn't the biggest problem. The experience of navigating that complexity was.
06 · Key Insights
Four insights that reframed the problem
1
Complexity creates hesitation
Families faced multiple requirements, documents, and verification steps. Presented all at once, the process became overwhelming.
2
Trust is as important as financing
Education is an emotional decision. Users needed confidence in the people and institutions involved, not just the loan.
3
Schools are critical to the ecosystem
Schools already held much of the verification information. We made them active participants rather than external parties.
4
Each stakeholder sees the journey differently
Everyone touched the same financing lifecycle but needed different information connected, yet role-specific.
07 · Design Principles
Principles that guided every decision
Break complexity into steps
Large processes should feel approachable.
Use schools as trusted partners
Leverage existing relationships for verification.
Build trust through transparency
Users should always know what's happening next.
One ecosystem, not four products
Every stakeholder feels part of the same journey.
08 · Exploration & Tradeoffs
Balancing competing stakeholder needs
Simplifying the application for families often added work for schools. More transparency for investors created new requirements for administrators. We had to make deliberate tradeoffs.
Scope vs. ambition
Founders envisioned solving every scenario from day one — but building it all at once would overwhelm users and engineering. We defined the core financing journey and prioritized MVP workflows.
How much to reveal upfront
Rather than exposing the entire process at once, we chose a staged approach that revealed information progressively — reducing cognitive load while keeping transparency.
Simplicity vs. completeness
We protected the family experience as the priority, distributing necessary complexity to roles better equipped to handle it.
09 · Final Solution
A structured education financing journey
Instead of one overwhelming process, the experience was divided into manageable stages — letting each stakeholder focus on one step at a time while keeping visibility into overall progress.
01
Parent Journey
A staged application that never overwhelms
Financing is divided into clear stages — eligibility, KYC, documents, review and approval — so families always know where they are and what comes next.
02
School-Led Verification
Schools as a trusted verification layer
Schools validate information and support verification workflows, building confidence across the ecosystem by leveraging relationships that already exist.
03
Investor Transparency
Visibility into opportunities and progress
Investors gain transparency into financing opportunities and funding progress, creating trust and accountability within the ecosystem.
04
Admin Operations Hub
A single source of truth for operations
Administrators get a centralized view of applications, approvals, stakeholders and operational activity — managing the entire ecosystem from one place.
End-to-End Visibility
Everyone sees status, actions, documents & next steps
Current status
Where the application stands right now.
Pending actions
What each stakeholder needs to do next.
Required documentation
Exactly what's still missing.
Next steps
A clear path forward at every stage.
10 · Impact
From an abstract idea to a development-ready ecosystem
While EFG was still in its early stages, the project successfully transformed a business idea into a structured, buildable product ecosystem.
Product Impact
Defined the first end-to-end education financing experience.
Established workflows across 4 stakeholder groups.
Created a scalable foundation for future growth.
Business Impact
Aligned founders and stakeholders around a shared vision.
Helped validate operational workflows before development.
Increased confidence in the feasibility of the model.
Operational Impact
Clarified stakeholder responsibilities.
Standardized financing and verification workflows.
Reduced ambiguity around ecosystem interactions.
Social Impact
Designed to support EFG's mission — making quality education more accessible by reducing financial barriers for families.
11 · Reflections & Learnings
Designing financial products is rarely about the transaction
The real challenge lies in creating trust, clarity, and alignment across multiple stakeholders. More than anything, this project showed me how product design can contribute to meaningful social impact when technology makes opportunities more accessible.
Design in ambiguity
Comfort with undefined, evolving problem spaces.
Learn complex domains fast
Going deep on fintech, KYC and financing.
Translate vision to product
Turning business ideas into real experiences.
Balance every need
Weighing user, business and operational goals.
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