We (finally) have our idea!
Nailing down the features of our mobile app idea and getting buy-in from our clients
From last week, we came to a unanimous decision on an app idea. This was a big milestone for our team, but we still had some things to iron out before we could start building and iterating. For this week, we had a few major goals:
- Solidify what features we wanted to include in our mobile app
- Get client buy-in on our app idea
- Build out a first prototype
7 Core Features
With a group brainstorming session, we decided on a few core features that the app should include, based off our initial idea and user testing feedback. We also considered what we would want to probe more deeply through design and user testing.
Questions
A quiz about interests and skills would appear on cards that the user could swipe ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Answering questions helps the app learn about the user and later cater their feed. This could manifest as virtually “infinite” questions the user could keep answering until boredom (à la OkCupid), or it could be shorter quizzes that can be visited each day.
Profile + Results
Then the user would receive their quiz results describing their particular attributes, which would appear on their profile. We found that self-exploration, as opposed to career exploration, is an important motivator for teens.
Feed
The feed is the heart of the app. This is where various job-related content appears for the user to browse at their leisure, such as articles, videos, and local events to attend. This was backed by our research that getting a variety of exposure, especially hands-on experience, is the best way for teens to feel confident in a career direction.
Explore
This feature came directly from user feedback. We heard from students that they wanted the ability to deliberately search for specific job titles they were interested in and see related content. (Hello Usability Heuristic #3: user control and freedom) In the explore feature, users could search or browse for specific industries and job titles to learn more.
Archive
The archive feature allows users to bookmark material from their feed to save for later or to view again at a later time. We found that this is a common feature with other social media feeds.
Wishlist
We added the wishlist feature so users can save particular job titles they are most interested in. This would help students recognize the particular careers they are considering, and this would be a good metric to track students success in the app. We imagine this list could then provide students with additional planning steps or help adult influencers more catered support.
Progression
To promote engagement of the app, we borrowed the idea of progression from game design. Through the use of something like badges and missions, this feature would help incentivize students to engage with the critical parts of the app and encourage them to discover their career interests.
The First Pitch
We brought our idea to our clients and…they liked it! They agreed this one would be the most feasible in terms of a standalone app, and this idea is accessible to a wide range of students regardless of their location or access to resources. Our clients advised that we should be thinking more thoroughly about where the content was coming from and how the feed is curated for the user. Overall, our team felt good about moving forward with this idea for our project.
V1 Prototype
In the later part of the week, we started to build out our first prototype. Somewhere between mid- and high-fidelity, we built out screens for the questions, profile, and the feed using Sketch and InVision. It was finally starting to look real! Check out the following link to see for yourself:
Our team used this week to set the foundation of our idea and plan for the rest of the summer. Read next week’s post about our user test findings and how we decided to build out our next prototype!
