Empowering Students with Lasting Career Connections Beyond Carrer Events
Students lack a dedicated platform to access career resources and connect with industry professionals outside carrer 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?
Tools
Figma
FigJam
Google Docs
Trello
Timeline
June 2024 - August 2024
(9 weeks)
Group
6 UX Designers
Introduction
Our team collaborated with Your Future is Our Business (YFIOB), a local Santa Cruz County organization that empowers students with skills and resources for career exploration.
Our challenge was to identify a key problem in the career development space and design a solution that could support students in building meaningful connections and exploring career opportunities.
Project Impact: Our first pitch received 100% positive feedback during testing and was approved by YFIOB for further development.
My Role
I 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.
Despite Evolving Tools, Students Struggle to Follow Up with Industry Professionals Due to Lack of Effective Communication Channels
“what we’ve also noticed is that [YFIOB] bring our career speaker in, they’re super engaged, they love it, they’re interested and then we leave and nothing becomes of it afterward. As a result, these opportunities often become mere formalities rather than meaningful stepping stones for students’ growth and professional development.”
While career events provide initial opportunities…
Just as every student’s aspirations and journey are unique, their career exploration needs are equally diverse. Yet, many are left without the tools and opportunities they need to thrive.
Over 75% of students in Santa Cruz County feel unequipped to explore career options beyond high school.
Only 1 in 3 students actively follow up on career fairs or events, limiting their growth potential.
Students struggle to stay connected with industry professionals due to unclear follow-up channels, often resorting to cold messaging.
We analyzed eight interviews with industry professionals, educators, and volunteers, identifying key challenges students face in career exploration, such as navigating life beyond college pressures and improving follow-up after career events. From this, we developed problem briefs, brainstormed "How-Might-We" prompts, and sketched storyboards to explore solutions. We also interviewed two industry professionals from youth organizations to gain insight into the benefits and limitations of each concept.
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?
we ultimately combined two of our solution concepts: a program alumni community discord server/community app and an app to facilitate a connection between students and industry workers.
Presenting LinkUP
Turning career fair connections into lasting opportunities!
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
