Ironhack Final Project: Apprenticeship.Miami
About Apprenticeship.Miami
For the final project in Ironhack, Mauricio Carrasco and I worked with the President and CEO of MiamiEdTech, Carlos Vazquez, to create an app MVP of the onboarding and scheduling systems for their Apprenticeship.Miami branch. Apprenticeship.Miami is a branch of MiamiEdTech that focuses on working with companies to launch registered apprenticeship programs and connect them with apprentices who are highly motivated, talented, and truly representative of all that Miami has to offer.
Something that many people don’t quite understand is the difference between apprenticeships and internships. An apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study, whereas an internship is the position of a student or trainee who works in the organization, sometimes without pay, in order to gain work experience or satisfy requirements for a qualification.
Project Brief Overview
We were tasked with designing an app for Apprenticeship.Miami that consists of a process where a potential employer and employee can answer questions that help us build a profile that can lead to a great match. It was made very clear to us that getting enough information from the employer in the beginning is crucial so that Apprenticeship.Miami can better understand how to support the intern or apprentice while they are at the job site.
Research Findings
We gathered a lot of information and facts from this presentation and article regarding apprenticeships since we didn’t know much about them prior to this project. From our findings, we were able to take some of the facts and flip them into questions in our MVP so we could educate users and learn more about the employers during the sign up phase.
Survey Results
To get a better understanding of employers who have worked with apprentices before, we created a survey that consisted of all open-ended questions to gain insight from their experience.
Some things we learned were:
- Employers want apprentices because they’re low-cost labor and they wouldn’t require training once becoming full-time.
- Employers expect apprentices to ask questions, learn from failure, and that while they may not provide the most value in the beginning, by the end they become independent.
- The biggest challenges with apprentices are that they make incorrect assumptions instead of asking questions, they can be lazy or lack passion, and they can be entitled to automatically receive a job offer.
Competitive Analysis
Moving on, we conducted a competitive analysis on Handshake and Multiverse, as those are who Carlos saw as Apprenticeship.Miami’s biggest competitors.
Our main takeaways from this were that Handshake provides a smooth onboarding experience and empowers users by giving them the ability to reach out to hiring managers directly, while Multiverse offers free courses that allow users to boost their existing skillset and has coaches to work with candidates. Both of these competitors’ ultimate end goal is to get people a job and are free services.
Problem Statement and How Might We…
Continuing from there, we created our problem statement and how might we statement based on the employer’s perspective.
Our problem statement is, “When looking to hire, I want to be more informed about the value of apprentices so that I can make the best decision for my company on a business and talent growth perspective.”
And our how might we statement is, “How might we design an app that educates employers about the value of apprentices, as well as gathers information about the company and their goals?”
User Persona and User Journey
This leads us to our user persona, Sebastian Fernandez, who is a 31-year old hiring manager for Origin PC in Miami, Florida.
Some of Sebastian’s goals and needs are to learn about the value proposition of investing into apprentices and to find ideal candidates who are eager to learn and succeed in their field.
Some of his pain points are that he isn’t aware of the benefits that come from investing in apprentices early on and that in the beginning, apprentices need to learn their responsibilities which lowers overall productivity until they are independent.
For our user journey, Sebastian goes through his typical process of searching for candidates to hire.
Our main focus here is the frustration stage, which is:
Based on Sebastian’s past experience, he is conflicted because his instinct is that his company would lose value by hiring an apprentice even though it’s actually the other way around over time.
User Story and User Flow
This brings us to our User Story: As a hiring manager, I want to learn about the value of apprentices and how they can benefit my company so that I can set up a program to guide/mentor them and eventually hire them for a full time position.
To visualize our user’s happy path, we created a user flow that showcases the steps of our MVP.
MoSCoW Method
Before diving into the UI side of things, we used the MoSCoW Method to identify what we Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won’t Have to essentially prioritize features. This proved to be valuable given we had two weeks total to work on this project and we wanted our scope to be realistic.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
When it was time to start ideating, Mauricio and I decided to design our mockups separately so that we can go over them after and choose the best ideas to keep moving forward
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Using our Low-Fidelity mockups as a base reference, we then created our Mid-Fidelity wireframes which included every screen for the onboarding process and scheduling system.
It was during this stage where we created our components.
Usability Testing
Once we were satisfied with our Mid-Fidelity Prototype, it was time to get it in the hands of some users for usability testing. For this process, we created a list of scenario tasks for our users to complete. The result of this was that of the five usability tests given, there was a 100% success rate of all scenario tasks with an average completion time of 1:25 min.
This told us that our MVP was accessible, quick, and and easy to use. Additionally, we were able to get some really valuable feedback that we considered as we moved forward into our High-Fidelity Prototype.
Colors and Typography
When it came to the colors, we wanted our MVP to have a Miami-like feel to it. Additionally, we have two sets of colors — one for the onboarding process and the other is for the in-app experience.
Regarding the typography, we wanted to stay consistent with MiamiEdTech’s typefaces. Therefore, we used both Monsterrat and Roboto for the headings and body text, respectively.
High-Fidelity Wireframes
The result of all the above ultimately led us to our awesome high-fidelity prototype! While the images below are just for show, you can check out the interactive prototype for yourself here!
Conclusion
We learned so much in just these two weeks as well as had a great experience working with Carlos! Here are some of our final findings and next steps:
