Mobile app to help students build career connections after career events.
How might we provide resources to students and career speakers to facilitate effective communication and engagement and maximize the benefits of post-event connections?
LinkUp : Linking students to career speaker communities
Client - Your Future is Our Business (YFIOB) a local Santa Cruz County organization that empowers students with skills and resources for career exploration.
Tools - Figma, FigJam, Google Docs, Trello
Timeline - June 2024 - August 2024 ( 9 Weeks)
Team - 6 UX Designers
My Role - Collaborated with my team to brainstorm innovative ideas and spearheaded the initial research phase. I took the lead in transforming interview insights and user journey data into intuitive wireframes and polished high-fidelity prototypes, ensuring a seamless and user-centered design process.
Project Impact- Our first pitch received 100% positive feedback during testing and was approved by the client for further development.
“What we’ve also noticed is that we [YFIOB] bring our career speaker in, they’re [students] super engaged, they love it, they’re interested and then we leave and nothing becomes of it afterward. Students are too shy to reach out or they don’t have a clear platform and we want to do something about it”
Problem
Students struggle to initiate conversations with industry professionals during & after career events due to uncertainty and hesitation in how to follow up effectively.
When the company reached out to us about this problem, we began our research by understanding why students struggled to stay connected after career events. This led us to ask: what could make it easier for students to connect with industry professionals before or after events and reduce missed opportunities for mentorship and career growth?
Solution
An app that offers voice calls, chats, and event & speaker directories to help students engage confidently, access speaker info, and build lasting connections all in one place.
To reduce the pressure and uncertainty students face when networking, the platform offers voice calls, community chats, and introductory panels that begin before the actual event. Through LinkUP students get to know speakers in a more approachable setting, lowering the barrier to conversation.
Gaining Insights Into The Issue
Only 1 in 3 students actively follow up on career fairs or events
Our online survey revealed that many students faced internal barriers that held them back from reaching out to event speakers after the event.
What specific challenges were students facing that prevented them from reaching out to industry professionals after the event?
From the four interviews I joined with career speakers and students, one common issue stood out: many students didn’t know where to start or how to approach professionals, which made following up feel confusing and intimidating.
3 main user pain points
Many students stuggles expressing ther throghts through chat and preffered an online community
Lack of Information: Students often don’t know the names or contact details of the professionals who spoke at the event, making it difficult to follow up or find them online.
Communication Anxiety: Many students feel nervous or unsure about how to start a conversation, especially when reaching out on formal platforms like LinkedIn.
No Central Platform: There’s often no dedicated space or system that allows students to easily reconnect with professionals or access post-event resources.
Our research showed that students struggled to stay connected with industry professionals due to unclear follow-up channels, often resorting to cold messaging.
So, How might we create a seamless platform that fosters meaningful, ongoing communication between students and industry professionals, maximizing the impact of career events and enhancing post-event engagement?
After some storyboarding, We Finally came up with an app that turns career fair connections into lasting opportunities!
Presenting LinkUP
LinkUp helps students connect with industry professionals from career fairs, allowing professionals to sign up and share events while helping students stay connected and build lasting relationships
Bringing Ideas to Life
Student View
Career events sign up page
Students can easily explore the event calendar and sign up for career events happening in their area. This feature also allows them to revisit past events and gain insights into the industry professionals who participated, helping them stay informed and make meaningful connections.
Students can engage with community chats, send direct messages, or even voice chat with volunteers at YFIOB and career event speakers. Since these professionals have willingly joined the platform, students can expect more meaningful interactions with a lower chance of being left without a response
Chat with industry professinal
Expanded view of the chat tabs
As shown here, students have the ability to send and receive valuable feedback on their questions or connect with mentors in advance. The call feature can also be used for post-event debriefs, allowing students to ask follow-up questions and receive answers later. This enhances student engagement and contributes to a positive overall experience.
Our Design Process
Building an experience with the customer at the center
This diagram helped gain a comprehensive overview of the experience flows. We mapped out task flows to visually outline each step that the student will take. We began by defining key user actions and decisions, then organized them in sequence with shapes and connectors to represent each step and decision point along the way.
Visualizing student’s needs
Wireframes were an important aspect of our process as they provided a clear, visual representation of a website or app's layout and functionality before any design or development began, it helped us align on structure, content placement, and user flow. We created the wireframes using tools like Figma, and ProtoPie.
Before launching the app for user interaction, we needed to ensure it was intuitive and aligned with the students needs
These usability and heuristic tests helped us understand the gaps between our designs and helped us cater our designs closer to our user’s needs.
Removing the home screen to keep the platform simple and focus on the core user tasks
Adding back buttons that allow the user to easily navigate back to and access the information on the previous page.
Adding a QR code button on the right upper corner of the event screen, so that users could easily record their attendance for career events.
Adding “by YFIOB” on our welcome, sign-up, and login screens.
Removing the boxes surrounding the past and current event details information.
Fixing the spacing of text on our events screens.
Changing the Home Screen: As the main user tasks of the app are to chat with peers and industry professionals and sign up for events, it was questioned whether we needed our original home screen that had extra user tasks, such as having a professional highlight and recommendations for communities.
User Control and Freedom: For some of the pages on the interface such as the login screen and event screens, the design did not have back arrows.
Aesthetic & Minimalist Design: The past event details and current event details information boxes of our initial prototype had a box surrounding the information, which made it look like text boxes that the user could edit.
Screens Before Testing
Changes After Testing
