Nailing Down the Details

Fleshing out the manifestation of the design and defining who we are designing for

Recap from the last post: We worked to further understand the system’s details and answer our unanswered questions through visualizing the flow of information within the system. We also made process in understanding what our final prototype would be from a technical standpoint.

Ironing Out the System

To kick off this week, we spent more time thinking about each of the major parts of the system: the profile section, the feed section, the job exploration section, and an open search component. We discussed what the user should be able to do with each of those features, what screens would be a part of them, and what data components would need to be involved in order for them to work.

From here, we digitized a screen map to communicate our idea internally and to our clients and faculty. This also helped us see which screens we could start designing in wireframe form.

We also created a data flow model in AirTable, which gave an idea of what would be dynamically happening on the backend when users interacted with feed content. We experimented with the idea of tagging various personality types and interests to the different pieces of content so that they could be appropriately served to users based on their profile. A viewable version of this can be found here.

Creating Personas

While we were doing this, personas were also created so that we could better understand who the users of our system would be. We were inspired by our archetypes for these personas — trying to incorporate different levels of motivation and understanding of career paths.

Manifestations of the Designs

We created wireframes for each of the sections, exploring layouts for the screens and creating versions of all the possible screens a user would see.

The profile section allows users to view their personality type, their interests (both user-input and system-generated), and their job interests (again, both user-input and system-generated). The user is able to edit their jobs and interests at any time by accessing the edit pages from their profile.

The feed includes a variety of content, such as videos, photos, articles, activities, and events. The user may filter their feed to see only specific job titles, specific interests, or a specific type of content. After clicking into a piece of content, the user reviews the content based on what they liked / didn’t like.

When users sign up for events or activities that take place outside of the app, they are placed in their “To Do” section. This are reminds users of upcoming events and activities as well as reminds them to review them once the event or activity has passed.

We explored different ways in which users could openly browse jobs in the system — through a long list with suggested categories at the top or through a visualization of categories which get more and more specific as you click into them.

A daily job exploration would allow users to get a few jobs a day to explore.

Reeling It Back In…

In the midst of doing the above work, we had a mid-summer check-in with our program director. He shed light on the fact that our idea as it currently existed was missing the aspect of motivation — something that we had heavily emphasized as a core issue back in the spring presentation. We realized that we might be asking too much for students to remain engaged in the system between uses and over a period of time. Our director therefore encouraged us to brainstorm a way to make our system more engaging for students so that they would have incentive to continue using it over time and would want to come back for more than one session.

What’s Next?

Check out next week’s blog to see how we iterated on our idea to better incorporate that idea of motivation!