Overview
CONSULENTE is a career experts advisor app that helps people who struggle with their career choices so that an expert can help them with a career they are passionate about.
Introduction
This feature lets user login or first time user to signup and be able to see the onboarding flow so that the user can get a better sense of the App.
Search & Filter
Search and filter Experts helps users to find someone highly skilled and vetted professionals so that they broaden their perspectives on a topic or field they specialise which they can do with clear, easy and intuitive flow for right experts to be displayed for criteria they set through filters.
Book Appointment
This feature lets user book appointment with an expert the user is impressed with the qualifications and professional experiences of the expert and has decided to fix an appointment to talk more about his/her profession, skills and pros and cons of pursuing it on a platform both are comfortable in.
Payment
User can confirm the booking through billing and payment options so that the appointment is confirmed once the expert accepts your appointment request.
1. Understand
Context
To begin the project with, I did some exploratory research to get some idea about potential target users; who are actually facing problems in making career decisions. This is where I made some assumptions about some scenarios in which potential users can have real problems.
Possible Problems potential user must be facing
• Indecisive about his/her career choices.
• Not aware of career choices and job prospects available in specialisations of their interest.
• Career choices are influenced by market trends, family, friends, peer pressure rather than giving a thought about what invokes the passion and commitment to work on something or study in future.
• Decides to make a career change after working in another profession for a while.
2. Assume
Problem Statement
There are some people who struggle with their career choices so that they can discover their true passion and make a successful career.
Hypothesis
The potential user needs a way to make a clear decision regarding his career choice with the help of an expert because he/she should not regret a career choice they made.
We will know this to be true when we see more number of users with successful career retention and employment, satisfaction and happiness in pursued career.
3. Observe
Validate Hypothesis through User research
Since Problem statement is made only out of assumptions through initial exploratory research, it is important to validate these assumptions through actual user tests both by qualitative and quantitative methods.
Quantitative Research Method
Quantitaive research is conducted through User Survey by releasing a bunch of closed questions to target users over social media or emails. These questions are formulated in such a way that we can learn upon user behaviour revolving around problem statement that can lead us towards right direction to pickup right candidates for user interviews. So I have conducted a user survey targeting people interested in career change over google forms.
Results from User Survey
Out of 37 participants most are equally spread across Asia, Europe and North America. These results prove that most of the respondents do their own research and out of desire to follow their passion are the people who are determined for a career change. Click the link below to see full results of User survey.
Qualitative Research Method
This method involved study of people who pursued a new career without an expert’s help and understand the extent to which they had a career retention of and employment, satisfaction and happiness in pursued career. I conducted one on one interviews with 3 people, formulating questions to identify to what extent the Null hypothesis qualifies. in this section I am going to present my findings and insights from my user interviews to decide if the Null hypothesis is true or not.
User Interviews in Depth
Before I went with the official one on one interviews, I did some exploratory research with some casual tone and observed the kind of audience in my survey and their responses. After some analysis I decided who I need to go ahead with official one on one interviews to get some insights useful for my problem statement. Hence I decided to go with a high school student, recent graduate still finding himself and a mid 40s woman going through mid life crisis. Find detailed study of User interviews below
4. Define
Personas
Taking into consideration the user research analysis and affinity mapping, it makes sense to archetype few personas that resonate with the pinpoints and needs mentioned in the research. Hence we have generalised what we have learnt into two personas. They are
User Journeys
With the help of user journeys I was able to visualise the potential journey a user might take in order to achieve his/her goals. Hence I reckoned user journeys for created personas. They are
Iterative improvement of App Architecture
5. Ideate
Sketches
With the help of App architecture and defined user journeys, I made some initial sketches to visualise and translate ideas into action on paper. Find in the following link full detailed sketches.
Wireframes
To build upon the sketches and have as many potential solutions as possible, and go beyond the firsts ideas, I have started wireframing on computer. After each round of sketching, I could identify the most effective solutions, and slowly create mid and high fidelity prototypes.
6. Validate
Usability Test Analysis
Once usability tests are done, it was important to Isolate and Visualise bits of information quickly so that previously unseen patterns and hierarchies can emerge.
7. Iterate
Improvement from Usability Test Analysis
Enhanced readability and intuitiveness of the onboarding screens
It is expressed in the usability tests by 5 out of 6 users that inorder to understand the initial design, there is no relevant information on the screen regarding which features the app is talking about. The brief is too lengthy to focus on and read.
Added Search functionality to filters
All the 6 participants asked for the search functionality inside filters because When the lists and subcategories grow longer, it is a chaos if search feature is not introduced; in-order to find their desired filters.
Introduced inactive DONE button.
It’s actually just 2 out of 6 participants who mentioned this error, technically and logically it makes sense to fix it since user should not be allowed to click done with empty field.
Consistency through Design System
Design system helps to identify various elements and components in our app making life easy😃 for developers during handoff.
Conclusion
I started this project as result of collaboration with a tutor and mentor from CareerFoundry for over 6 months who helped me practice my design thinking skills and apply it practically on a real time project and the final product evolved as a result of so many iterations and improvements. I have been using this design thinking process all over this project in an iterative manner by taking into consideration the improvements I have been suggested to do all over the course by my mentors and peers. I have learnt using wide variety of tools and methods to be a successful Product Designer which is also the goal of this project.