Career Exploration Service | service design, interaction design
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?
Outcome
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
3 girls team(with Julia Shao, Aiko Ito) in IIT ID
Design Research
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.
By interviewing with professionals who have curvy career path,, middle school students, parents, teachers and visiting local schools, we gain insights on the challenge in current education system on career exploration.
Design Analysis
Through patterns in research findings, we developed those most important three ones that directly impact the final solution.
Design Synthesis
How might we help youth explore career options beyond their social circles and make career-related information more tangible?
By exploring couple different solution as A-day-in-life comic print, camp, career meet up, office tour and etc., We made decision on the solution as the next section. The decision is made based on feedback from users, service design experts and rough calculation on business profit.
The methods we use for synthesis includes: User journey map, Service Blueprint, Story board, Service pitch/concept map and etc. The detail of concept validation process is in the later section.
Solution
Mypath is an online platform that helps students navigate career exploration beyond their social circles and provides more tangible and personalized information by connecting them with professionals.
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.
Revenue Model
Go to Market Solution
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.
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.
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.
Concept Validation process
We developed our concept through prototyping -- both conceptual (service journey map) and functional prototypes (paper prototype, Concierge MVP). The main hypothesis we tested are:
Youth connecting with professionals via conversation will be able to better understand career options.
Thinking about interests, values, and personality will drive youth to think about careers, to have better ideas about what they might be able to do in the future. Will help them better understand themselves and navigate options.
Professionals will be interested in engaging with youth in such platform and vice versa.
What we learned(top 3) on paper prototyping for exploration
User types: Youth who has clear vision on future have different needs as the people who is still exploring.
Interaction: step by step flow works better, clear visual cue is helpful on navigation.
Relationship with professionals: most of kids express interests in exploring by hands-on practice and desire to have a mentor.
What we learned on simulating the video call interview with professional:
facilitation: facilitation in the interview process is necessary to value professionals' time and guarantee the learning.
prepare / follow up: preparation and reflection steps are necessary, but need redesign with the simplest format.
Service Blueprint
By building the service blueprint, we understand the more details about this service including user interface and back-end support. Based on this, we start to calculate the cost, consider the business model, and how to make the service to be sustainable, even profitable.
