Contact
Guide my
Career
Helping people make better career decisions
The Problem
More than 90% of Indian households have limited or no access to Career Guidance
Let me illustrate the problem with a short story about Hrithik.
Hrithik Kapoor
Hrithik, a 12th class student is enrolled in engineering entrance coaching which he hates.
His father wants him to become a chemical engineer like him and do a government job. Hrithik thinks he does not belong to engineering field.
He is passionate about art, sketching things and building model aero planes. But he does not know what to do with his passion and choose a career that offers some interesting work for him.
Due to lack of guidance and influence of his parents, Hrithik had to study chemical engineering despite his lack of interest in the field.
The Solution
Guide my
Career
Mobile application for students and working professionals
Expected to help users in making career decisions
Offers solutions to questions like
What career to choose?
What to study for a selected career?
How to grow in a chosen career?
WHAT
Market Research
why
To understand and gain a deeper understanding of the problem
how
Read and collected data from differnet sources on the internet
Market size
40 Crores
Youth Population
30 Lakhs
Graduate students per year
Market problems
92% Indian
families have limited career guidance from schools and institutions
93% students
are just aware of just 7 career options
1:3000
Student : counsellor ratio is way less than international standard of 1:250
86% Indian
parents are concerned about the choice of the higher education
Current and future impact of problem
75%
of employers find it difficult to hire the right talent
No Jobs
47%
Youth unemployable
24.5 Crore
Talent surplus by 2030
51%
Youth face difficulty due to lack of career guidance
8.5 Crore
Talent deficit by 2030
WHAT
Secondary Research
why
To gain greater understanding target audience, competing products & services and mental models of existing users.
how
Conducted demographic study, comparative study and mental model analysis.
Research insights
There is no collaborative platform existing today that can connect students, professionals, and counselors for knowledge sharing and cooperation.
There is an absence of any feature where students and early-stage professionals can experience different occupations through short assignments and internships.
There is no feature available in existing apps that list industry professionals who can mentor people about their areas of expertise.
WHAT
User Interviews
why
To gain qualitative insights user attitudes, beliefs, and experiences. To understand the exact pain points of users related to career guidance.
how
Conducted online structured interviews with participants and recorded the interviews for further study.
I managed to interview only 11 users out of 16 users who agreed as some people did not show up and some had other urgent issues at the time.
After deep study of user interview recordings, key user problems related to the business case were identified. Some major user problems identified are as follows.
User problems
Difficulty in transitioning to a new skill
Difficulty in determining the important career skills
Uncertainty and confusion in identifying personal interests and aligning them with skills
Uncertainty regarding personal passion and interest in any field.
Influence of family and external expectations on decision-making related to careers.
Limited understanding of the rapidly changing skill requirements
Challenges in sustaining and improving skills to stay competitive
Lack of career guidance and mentorship in their career.
Limited research , lack of awareness and comprehensive information about career options.
WHAT
Analysis
why
To make sense of huge amount of data generated from primary and secondary research
how
Did experience and thematic analysis to find out possible solutions to problems and designed a navigation structure for the application.
Experience analysis
The following activities were performed as a part of experience analysis.
Problem solving : The existing mental models derived from secondary research and solutions were brainstormed for the user problems.
Solution recommendation : The unique linear flows were identified and listed in detail in this stage.
Experience Analysis 1
Root cause 1
Lack of self-awareness and clarity in personal interests
User problem set 1
BEH
a) Uncertainty regarding personal passion and interest in any field.
Current mental model
Career assessment
Click on CTA on the landing page.
Click on get started CTA on solutions page.
Click on get started on Assessment page.
Enter mobile number and proceed to assessment page and click get started.
Read instructions and start the test.
Pick a test language.
Answer the top challenge question.
Answer the most valuable questions.
Read instructions before test and proceed to assessment dashboard.
Choose language on assessment dashboard and start the part 1 assessment.
Answer the practice and assessment questions on the different parts of assessment.
Proceed to book a counseling session after the test completion.
Read counseling session guidelines and pick up three different time slots for session.
Buy the counseling plan.
Proposed Solutions
EA1/RC1/UP1/a
Career assessment-Beginner
BEH
Correction
Select career assessment on homepage.
Enter personal details if not registered.
Read instructions for assessment and start assessment.
Complete different parts of assessment.
Book a counseling session by selecting a suitable date and time.
Complete payment and get a session confirmation on email.
EA1/RC1/UP1/a
Interest and Personality assessment
BEH
New
Click on start assessment.
Enter personal details if not registered.
Read instruction and start self reflection exercise.
Answer subjective questions in self reflection exercise.
Read instruction and start Interest assessment.
Complete interest assessment.
Read instruction and start Personality assessment.
Complete personality assessment.
Get partial assessment results and Book a complete evaluation session with expert.
Receive session confirmation email.
Experience threading : The whole experience of users was threaded in this stage by referring to all listed unique ideal flows and necessary peripheral flows. While all the flows are collated , they are getting mapped as pre-condition flows, ideal flows and post-condition flows to make sure that threading of experience is complete.
Pre-condition flow(s)
Ideal flow(s)
Post condition flow(s)
Login
Sign Up
View/edit profile page
Career assessment-Beginner
Interest and Personality assessment
View assessment report
View recommended career clusters
Career Explorer
View Career paths
View profile recommendations
Skill Recommendation & Transition roadmap
View career tools
Login
Sign Up
Career Information System
Search a career/job role
View Career paths
Find a skill
Learn a skill
Assess a skill
Skill learning Roadmap
Course listing & Rating
Curated learning materials
Login
Sign Up
View/edit profile page
Interest and Personality assessment
Find a mentor
View mentor recommendations
View mentor profile
Rate a mentor
Get a Personal Mentor
Manage meetings
Reschedule meetings
Cancel a meeting
Sign Up
Login
Find a skill
Explore a skill
Bookmark a skill
Curated learning materials
Course listing & Rating
Search a course
View/share a course
Learn a skill
Assess a skill
Skill learning Roadmap
Project based Learning
View skill report
Sign Up
Login
Career Information System
Find a skill
Learn a skill
Project based Learning
View a Project
View/Edit project roadmap
Upload a Project
Curated learning materials
Course listing & Rating
Search a course
View/share a course
Sign Up
Login
Career assessment-Beginner
Career Assessment-Intermediate/Advanced
Interest and Personality assessment
View assessment report
Skill Recommendation & Transition roadmap
Find a mentor
Get a Personal Mentor
Manage meetings
View Career paths
Find a skill
Learn a skill
Assess a skill
Sign Up
Login
Career Information System
Find a skill
Curated learning materials
View assessment report
Course listing & Rating
Search a course
View/share a course
Thematic Analysis
The following activities were performed in thematic analysis.
Affinity Mapping : All ideal flows identified in the experience analysis were listed and main menu items were provided with labels. Hierarchy of the information was established by defining a navigation system.
Labels
User Problem
Business case
Reasoning
Blog
Insufficient literacy about employment laws impacting career decisions & salary negotiation and Limited understanding of rapidly changing skill requirements.
Education and Skill awareness
Blog will be accessible to all users. No sign-up will be required for the users to access information in the blog except for some premium content that will be accessible only after user signs up.
Profile
All problems
All business cases
This is an important section and will be accessible to user from the home screen. User will have to provide personal details to complete this section. Also user will acess all personalized recommendations in the profile section.
Self awareness guide
External influences and opinions creating confusion and uncertainty in career decision-making, requiring guidance in filtering and evaluating external opinions.
Career awareness
This section will be available to user on the home screen. This will further provide access to self awareness exercises and career tools. This section is important and need to appear on home screen as user may not ready for other features such as career assessment. They can acess this feature and solve their issues related to career decisions and guidance.
Career Information system
Limited research , lack of awareness and comprehensive information about career options.
Career awareness
This section will is highly important and will appear on the home screen. This will provide all information to users related to careers solving the problem of lack of awareness and limited information about career options.
Start career guide
Challenges in job search and transition from college to work.
Career guidance
This section is important and wil be availael on home screen. This will provide help to users who need help in job search and start of their careers.
Career assessment
Uncertainty regarding personal passion and interest in any field.
Career guidance
This section will appear on home screen as this will form the core part of solution offered to users.This section will furthet provide access to assessment tools that will help the user identify their interest and gain awareness.
Help
All problems
All business cases
The help section is important for providing better services to the user. If user is facing any issue or they are not able to find anything . then they can access this section and get some help.
Navigation prototype testing : A navigation prototype with all the navigation labels was shared with the participants on a zoom session. The participants validated the prototype and provided insights about the possible improvement in the navigation of the app.
Onboarding
The early versions of onboarding included 3 screens only that showcased the 3 major features of the application including career discovery, exploration and advice.
During usability test, 2 out of 5 users faced difficulty while deciding what section they wanted to explore when they did not had any idea about their careers.
So the onboarding screens were increased to 7 with a questionnaire to guide the user based on what the user had in mind while using the app the for the first time.
7 Onboarding screens revised after usability test
Latest Onboarding
After several iterations, it was realized based on feedback from design mentor that onboarding was quit long for the new user. So a new shorter onboarding was designed that included 3 screens showing the major offerings of the application.
Home screen
The home screen of first draft was designed to include all the different sections/features of the app.
Different CTA’s were provided for the users to navigate to various solutions that appealed to them.
The latest home screen design was arrived after several iterations and feedback from mentor.
I optimized the home screen so that user can view all features of the app in the first fold itself.
Latest design
When a user returns to home screen after completing assessment
When a user returns to home screen without completing the assessment
Career Assessment
The first draft for the career assessment home screen included brief description about the career assessment section.
It was discovered during the usability studies that participants found the assessment too long and they did not understand the need for every section.
I improved the introduction screen to educate the user better about how is the assessment section is structured and what each section will accomplish.
Different assessment sections
The complete career assessment was divided into four different sections.
Images and illustrations were used for providing clear context to the user.
Assessment Results
The initial design of results screen showed only a congratulatory message with different CTAs for viewing results and career recommendations.
I optimized the design by providing only 1 CTA. The copy was made more interesting by including the name public figure to create interest in user to click and check results.
Switch to Desktop/Tablet for better viewing experience