uNXT — Web App

How to find your passion?







USER
11-12th Grade  Students
Parents
Teachers
Educational programs
Corporations
MY ROLE
Product Designer
Product Owner
UI Designer
Presenter
TOOLS
Whiteboards
Google photos
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe XD
Adobe Photoshop
TEAM
Douglas M. Sales and Business
Scarlet N. 11th-Grade Student



︎WHAT
uNxt is a Web app that helps High School children find their passion and suggest future careers they could pursue. Its also informs them about educational choices they could make to be on their desired career path.


︎HACKATHON
ProtoHack is a Hackthon that takes place across the world to help entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life. I went to the Vancouver Protohack on a saturday morning, without a preset team. We were briefed to come up with an Education-related solution. 

I met Scarlett (a very bright 11th grader) and Douglas (a business student) at Protohack and formed a team. After a lively discussion sprinkled with a lot of excitement and a few heated debates, we figured out a problem most high school students face- not being aware of their  future career objective. We decided to levearge having Scarlet - the user herself to our advantage.


︎TASK

To enable high school students to follow their passion, leading to future career paths.


︎CHALLENGE
Over 4 million Canadian public school students have no idea about careers until they are 23 years old. Although there are over 80 career fair events a year in Vancouver they are moderately ineffective in helping students. - Statcan.gc.ca

Stats collected from research involving 5,055,978 students in elementary/secondary public school in Canada. ︎


︎PROCESS
I folowed a simple Design Thinking process to arrive at a simple but elegant solution.


︎USER PERSONA
Kate is a High School student (Grade 11) who is clueless about finding her passions and her career path. She keeps hearing from adults about finding her passion or calling, so she can make future career choices and get relevant education towards that specific career goal.

She finds it difficult to figure thisngs out as she is intimidated about interacting with adults to inquire about career choices and she feel overwhelmed by high school work.

Finding a career choice is also not trendy with her group of friends. A miniscule number of her frinds are sure about thier future career paths. She has tried checking with the school career conseler, but got the same cliché advice about going to be a Doctor or an Engineer.


︎USER ANALYSIS
We started with an indepth user mapping and analysis. Having a 11th grader on the team - (Scarlett) really helped.

We used the User Journey mapping technique to understand how the problem is currently attempted to solve.




︎DEFINE

We came up with 3 different approaches and narrowed down on one solution:
To create a web-mobile app, to help 11-12 year old high school students find their passions and suggests future careers they could pursue.





︎COMPETITION 
V CAREER
VoiceBack Career interests test.
Tell you based on your interests what careers are best suited for you.




Broad- not catered to at just high-school students. ︎
CAREER CLUSTER Career interest quiz helps prospective students (and current students) to explore which career path is best for them


Caters an older demographic For Madison College- not catered to  high-school students. ︎
PATH SOURCE PathSource is America's premier career exploration tool.




For schools and consumers. Closes to our audience of high-school students. ptrimararily a college finding tool. ︎


︎PLATFORM

Web-based app that could be easily accesed on smartphones, offering students  access on the go. A corporation or educational institution version will be a desktop-based website (future developements) .




︎USER FLOW
An app flow with minimum number of clicks to get the user to a desired an quick outcome was designed. 





︎DELIVERABLES


A web app that helps students find their passions and suggests relevant career paths as a MVP.
For future plans we would like to develop it to connect students with Universities > Mentors > Internships > Jobs/Entrepreneurship.





︎ USER INTERFACE
A friendly, young style was chose to relate with teenagers, with carefull consideration to acheive a balance so that it looks sophisticated and not too childish to put them off.


App Screen and UI design

︎REVENUE MODEL
We propose using following avenues to secure funding and further monetize this service:
1. Government Funds Funding for initial development and research.
2. Advertising Selling ad space once we achieve a large enough customer base.

3. Corporations Sponsorship and future employee engagement.


︎FURTHER DETAILS
Presentation Deck link ︎
Glossary, notes, links, refs


︎RETROSPECTIVE
︎WHAT WORKED
1. Learnt how to work with a brand new team.
2. Worked rapidly in a time constraint of less than 8 hours.
3. Rapid prototyping and developing through constant iteration.
4. Lucky to work with the real user - Scarlett
5. We won the 3rd prize, not bad for a very long days work!


This was my 1st ever hackathon win.

︎ WHAT DID NOT
1. We did not do enough user tests earlier; a severe time constraint left no time for user tests.
2. I did not get to interact or learn from the other teams, judges and experts in the hackathon.
3. Lack of software developers/engineers on the team restricted us from understanding the backend operations and fleshing out the solution for real.

︎FUTURE PLANS

One of the judges was very impressed with the App Design and concept. She wants to help us gather funds to develop this idea in real life. 


The web app can be further developed to connect students to universities and colleges. They can also be further connected to career mentors and jobs or  entreprenuership ventures.


Take a look at some more of my work ︎