MyPath
A career navigation platform for youth
Overview
“What do you want to be when you grow up?" This is a question all of us have been asked at least once in our lives. However, how many of us are actually able to answer this question?
There’s an increasing and overwhelming number of job opportunities out. How does one even begin to become aware of and navigate through the vast number of career options available, especially from a young age?
MyPath is an online platform that helps students (ages 10+) navigate career exploration beyond their social circles and provides more tangible and personalized information by connecting them with professionals in the fields they are interested in.
My role
research(planning + research)
illustration
interaction design
video co-editing
revenue model
concept testing
Team
Julia shao
Aiko ito
Problem Framing
We discovered that the environment around jobs is quickly changing and is bound to see even greater change in the future. Given these rapidly changing circumstances around jobs and the challenges children and young adults currently face when navigating career paths, our team started to think about the increasing need for greater career education and counseling to help them identify and understand the best options for them in a more focused way.
We interviewed graduate students who have curvy career path, professionals, middle school students, parents and teachers to understand challenge in current education system on career exploration. The following three points are our main insights.
Solution
MyPath aims to support students’ career navigation in three phases: Explore, Connect, Plan for action. With MyPath, students are able to visually explore a variety of potential career options, are encouraged to reflect on their interests with a self-guided tool, engage in facilitated conversations with professionals via video call, and choose a mentor for creating an action plan, hands-on work, and future career-related guidance.
Solution | User Scenario
Solution | Highlighted Features
Prototype is available here.
Explore | career by interests and value
Based on user's input of interests and value, MyPath will give out multiple options. The options are presented by how much they are relevant with user's input. Students can review detail information about particular career.
Connect | Facilitate the conversation
MyPath provides the service to facilitate the conversation to be smooth and meaningful.
Before the conversation, MyPath helps students to prepare questions and send to professionals for preparation; During the conversation, MyPath prompts questions if needed; After the conversation, MyPath encourages students to send out Thanks you notes, and make reflection on what they've learned.
Plan for Action | Visualize user journey
By Visualizing the journey of career exploration, students can understand what they’ve learned. By reflection on their journey, they can make smart decisions on what is the next step and who is the best person for a mentor.
Testimonial from Parents & Kids
Revenue Model
Go to Market -- Professionals
Partner with companies which want to flexible opportunities for volunteer paid-off in order to increase number of available professionals. Currently, 21% of US companies provide this system.
Go to Market -- Parents
Screen professionals by background checking before they can take part on the platform.
Share youth’s progress via email updates in order to involve parents in a certain extend.
Go to Market -- Students
Partner with schools to advertise the new service and acquire user base
How to motivate professionals?
Offer professionals with several levels of involvement from providing information to conversation to mentorship.
Offer certifications that can be used to show off in other platform such as LinkedIn.
Design Process
Design Research
Visit Academy of Global Citizenship for middle school student's perception of future career and the elements that impact their perception, and their plan.
We started working on the project by searching the right size of problem in the education domain for 3 month duration. We found from trend research that environment around job is changing a lot -- such as AI will replace the half of jobs in the US, and we expected that there will be greater needs for career education and counseling because people should need to consider more their career choices.
We conducted several user interviews with professional school students who are career changers, parents and children, and high and middle school teachers.
We get insights from the research such as
1. Parents lack an effective channel for gathering career-related info for their children.
2. Education setting--If information is put into ‘real-world’ contexts, students can garner a deeper understanding of the subject and how to apply it. Relevancy for future.
4. Passions are not always telling of your career directions.
5. Children's knowledge of their potential career path is impacted heavily by their social circle.
Prototyping
We developed our concept through prototyping -- both conceptual (service journey map) and functional prototypes (paper prototype, Concierge MVP). We tested functional prototypes with potential users -- mid and high schoolers and professionals.
We decided which prototypes we develop based on the hypotheses we got from the research and uncertainty and risks. we tested the hypotheses in the prototyping and changed the features associated the hypotheses based on how the participants reacts.
User Journey Map
User journey map is used couple times in the whole design process.
In the beginning, we layout youth's experience by years from middle school to college to identify when is the correct time to introduce the career exploration service;
In the middle, User journey map is used to decide features we should include in the design, and helps us to figure out the two user type the service need cover: students who have clear focus; students who are still exploring broadly;
Lastly, user journey map is used to identify the flow and interaction of the platform.
Service Blueprint
By building the service blueprint, we understand the more details about this service, and what kind of back-end support are needed to support the service. Based on this, we start to calculate the cost, consider the business model, and how to make the service to be sustainable, even profitable.
