Informed Future ( Career guidance app ) Research, Product design

Overview

In 2019 I did a diploma in Digital Product design at Xperian School Hyderabad and we were asked at the time we started the course itself, to identify one problem area which each of us wants to really solve. The problem statement should be a little personal. Because if it is personal, we will put all our heart & soul to solve it.

The report almost includes all the phases of product design lifecycle, from the problem statement, Need finding, Discovery, Research, Ideation and Insights, value proposition, Low Fidelity Design, Medium Fidelity Design, Visual Design.

During the project process number of iterations is made because of research results. Hence as a Designer, I too believe that Design is a never-ending process. So will keep on iterating little more till it meets the customer needs to the most extent.

Problem Statement

HMW help early age students to understand where their strengths and interests lie in order to effectively think what career options they should think of and also help them understand different career options get the right perspective of the careers they will eventually want to transition into, in order to make informed decisions and later guide / mentor them in the respective direction.

Customers/ Users

Users ranged in different patterns and age users. You can see detailed persona of each user type in this case study

Roles & Responsibities

Personal project

Me : Reaserch, Design & strategy

Scope and Constraints

1-2 month timeline

Process

Need Finding

Knowns & Unknowns

To start research, I needed to understand first what are my Knowns & what are my unknowns. This shaped the direction of my research methodology

Knowns

Users types: Early age students, Undergraduates, Freshers, Mid-career employee, Career transition roles

Self-assessment is not done at all or not done properly.

Students don’t know the big picture of careers. No proper guidance.

Un-Knowns

Not aware of current ways of assessment.

Pain points need to understand from first-hand customers.

How are they currently choosing careers? Do users have an idea of the roadmap? Who guides the users? Is there any solution in the market ?

Don’t know what demographics are facing more problems.

What is the criteria for selecting career?

Rationale for Research Path

I selected “deep dive” as the path for research. As far as I was able to see the knowns which I was listed have little clarity & needed validation. Most of the knowns are on the basis of a singular approach & experiences. Thus I believed I needed more detailing to understand the problem space. I had taken some statements in the Known section as per my personal past experiences & some experiences from my friends & colleagues whom I have lived or Worked during my past years.

There was a need to go to ground zero & understand the problems form students themselves. It has been 6-9 years since I experienced this problem personally, now there could be new challenges.

I also thus believe formative research has to be done to get detailed insights.

Research types which I followed are :

1. Surveys ( To understand the quantitative insights)

2. 1:1 Individual interviews for different categories of users ( 8th -12th students , under graduates , recently pass out students ).

3. Focus groups ( where I can let them think through along with peers ) This way they can interact with each other & discuss different points & I can observe them .

4. CTA of Competition ( at least 1 )

User Persona

Day in a Life ( DILO)

Insights & Synthesis

Data Sets

Mind mapping & brainstorming

Observations Post Synthesis

Post synthesis some key takeways

Story boarding

Listing user neds and pain points in the form of stories.

Information Architecture

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Hi-Fidelity Visual Design

Prototype Link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ruc3OOfePfVdA-jE2u-4GuwKUPMjYqo6/view?usp=sharing

Outcomes & lessons learned

Since this project has my own interests apart from the design lab, I will like to take it further. In this iteration, I was not able to do a few things due to a lack of time resources.

There are still a few challenges that are to be taken care of in the next iterations.

In the Indian market, most of the career decisions are taken by my parents. So the application should take parents into consideration. Apart from student awareness, we need to take care of Parent awareness too.

Guidance is another important aspect. We need to come up with a sure shot criteria that will help us to select the right coaches in the platform.

Also, content design plays a huge role in the application. Depending upon the age of the user the content should change. Explaining engineering to 12th class students and 8th class students would surely take a different approaches.