This week, we carried out our first user testings. Using the card sorting method, we sought to discover what transitioning military members are giving highest priority to. Before setting out to have our veterans user test our system, we did per-runs with some of our cohort members. Our cohort members are quite similar to our transitioning military members, they have been in an incubator of sorts for an extended period of time, they have grown to become a tribe of individuals who are learning the same things even though their skills differ with their personal backgrounds, they are urgently and almost desperately seeking jobs RIGHT NOW!

Our cohort though sharing some similarity is also different from our target group, we therefore did not concentrate on the finite details that concern our cohort members but we did gather general Intel on what concerns them most in the process of finding a job, with limited time and intense commitments that do not allow “free” time to focus on the job finding.

With these results, we added more cards that arose during testing. Armed with these new cards and options, we presented these cards to military members. This group of four ( tested in this week) gave highest priority to — Next steps towards getting a specific job,
- Cost of living in certain location, and
- Connection to mentors.
The insights from the user testings will be developed into prototypes in this coming week. The team will user test the prototypes in effort to validate the needs of transitioning military members as well as how the information would be presented to them.

We are also in preparation mode to attend a two-day conference in Washington D.C. This event is being held at the VA headquarters and will give us an overview of the TAP process and the lessons that the soldiers are taken through in this time of transition. In this conference;

• The team will be exposed to organizations and partners of the program and those in connection with the main stakeholders ( soldiers) that they have previously not been able to connect with.
• The team will learn more about what changes TAP has undergone giving the team insight into how the proposed data driven solution would fit in the current system. Either by incorporating TAP or supporting it.
• The team also aims to have some attendees look at our prototypes as user testers. At the very least, the team will get contact information of individuals to work with over the summer in user testing our system.

In addition, the team will seek answers for;

1. What is the environment that soldiers will be interacting with the system in?
2. What points of intervention can the system fit in with the “cycle of a soldier’s life” in the military through the transition out of the military?
3. Are there any categories of information that we have missed in our selections?

Stay tuned for our update in next week.