The following case study is presented for educational purposes only.
The scenarios, events, and individuals described herein are entirely hypothetical and do not represent real-life situations or persons. Any resemblance to actual events, organisations, or individuals, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Overview
THE PRODUCT
NextCareer is a cross-platform tool design experiment which is designed to help young adults learn how to transition to a new career. NextCareer provides useful information about career, career specific communities, workshops and reports based on Industries.
PROJECT DURATION
February 2022
THE PROBLEM
For young adults and middle-aged millennials, it is difficult to find and transition to a new career and having the dilemma of whether a new career would be sufficient for their lifestyle and personal goals.
MY ROLE
Product Designer designing an a cross-platform tool for NextCareer from Ideation to Delivery.
THE GOAL
Design a cross-platform tool design experiment which is designed to help young adults learn how to transition to a new career.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Conducting interviews, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, and iterating on designs.
Understanding the user
User research: summary
I conducted interviews and created empathy maps, user stories to understand the users I’m designing for and their needs. A primary user group identified through research was young adults which are fresh graduate and secondary user group was young millennials who are in their 20s and early 30s.
The user group confirmed that there is a need for the solution or tool in helping people transit the career as smoothly as possible. The research also revealed that even though there are numerous resources out there, most of the participant doesn’t know where to start or overwhelmed with information overflow.
User research: pain points
Search-ability
It was hard to find a relevance and insightful career transition advice nowadays even though there are numerous resources out there.
Complexity
Finding a career is extremely hard, finding a passion and career is like a lucky draw.
Lost and Overwhelmed
Drawn in information overload, users are lost and overwhelmed without getting the goals they have been set to.
Persona: Kelvin
Problem statement
Kelvin is a software engineer who needs a helping hand in showing him of how it would look like working in a design career because he wants to know what it take before transition to a new career.
Persona: Emily
Problem statement
Emily is an accountant who needs a solution to find a new career based on the skills she already possessed because she think it would be more suitable for her if she starts something related to her.
Site map
Organised and sorted the site map for users to successfully experience and interact with the app or website.
Starting the design
Digital wireframes
Low-fidelity prototype
Using the completed set of digital wireframes, I created a low-fidelity prototype.
View the NextCareer low-fidelity prototype ↗️
Usability study: findings
I conducted two rounds of usability studies. Findings from the first study helped guide the designs from wireframes to mockups. The second study used a high-fidelity prototype and revealed what aspects of the mockups needed refining.
Refining the design
Mockups
Early designs suggests that users need more prominent cues for searching a space. Therefore, I added a search bar right at the top of the home screen make it easier for user to find a related topics
High-fidelity Prototype
Accessibility considerations
Provided access to users who are vision impaired through adding alt text to images for screen readers.
Used icons to help make navigation easier.
Used detailed imagery for details information such as disability friendliness to improve the accessibility friendly interface
Going forward
Takeaways
NextCareer provides useful information about career, career specific communities, workshops and reports based on Industries.
While designing the NextCareer app, I learned that the first ideas for the app are only the beginning of the process. Usability studies and peer feedback influenced each iteration of the app’s designs.
Next steps
Conduct Usability Studies on updated prototype to collect more insights on whether the tools work.
Reiterate the design and prototype on Booking of Events.
Integrate with more content platform to automate and enrich the platform with relevance to the user’s skillsets.
NextCareer is the third case study of the three case studies that I wrote as part of the Coursera - Google UX Design Professional Certificate course.