Redundancies, a saturated job market, a lack of opportunity and a sense of unfulfillment are all causing people to reassess what their future career will look like. The recent pandemic has accelerated this and for some it has provided a one-off opportunity for change.
Design a fully accessible app that offers support, inspiration and encouragement to those looking to change careers at any age with a focus on existing skills and interests.
skip to prototypeResearch trends, predictions and initiatives affecting the current job market.
Analyse existing support & products for career changers.
Identify how existing platforms bring together those entering a new industry with those already working in it.
Determine the key demographic that this app will appeal to.
Understand how, when & why people decide to change careers, identifying key barriers & pain points.
Define & understand the key factors that determine a successful career transition.
According to the World Economic Forum, 'The Fourth Industrial Revolution, demographic change, industrial transitions and changing consumer needs are creating demand for millions of new jobs'.
This ‘may lead to the creation of 133 million new jobs and the simultaneous displacement of 75 million jobs over the 2018–2022 period.’
Many existing job sites have recently expanded their offering to provide a more holistic service with tools and support for those looking to change career.
A questionnaire was created to provide additional responses that could be compared with the interview results. There were a total of 17 respondents aged between 24 - 37 who were asked to complete a combination of open and closed questions in order to understand their motivations, experiences and opinions on changing careers.
Six interviews were conducted remotely over video call with two men and four women, ranging in age from 28 - 36.
Three participants were in the process of trying to change careers and three had successfully made a career transition which importantly offered different viewpoints to the questioning.
“You need to consider the lifestyle your new career is going to give you and fully understand in practical terms whether it suits you”
“I had a past boss say to me 'stick with what you're good at'”
“people could get opportunities for better jobs or better education, if they knew it existed”
A more fulfilling, meaningful career enables you to create a difference, offers a means to better work/life balance and generates stronger financial stability.
Creating a sitemap took a couple of iterations as I worked through the structure and further simplified it, eventually ending up with three key areas; ‘Explore’, ‘Profile’ & ‘Planner’.
I discovered through my research that one of the key frustrations for those looking to change careers is often an initial lack of direction. I decided to create a task flow that explored how to utilise personalised suggestions within the App to inspire and explore a new career.
My user flows were a natural progression from the task flow I created, exploring ideas around career suggestions in more detail. I created two user flows for Georgie based on different stages of using the app:
Create an app that feels confident, energising & open minded alongside being practical, informative & supportive
Present clear, focused, curated content & personalised career suggestions to address the issue of overwhelm
Focus on Georgie as the key persona in order to maximise possibilities for change but keep Rory in mind
Five participants; three of whom were a close match to the primary persona. The other two were chosen to better reflect the diversity of the potential app users.
All five participants were able to complete all tasks unaided; there were however a few moments of hesitation / confusion during the user flow.
A lack of fluidity / guidance throughout the profile creation process and not enough reassurance about sections being saved
The design of the calendar means it is at first unclear how to move between months
Use of unclear nomenclature and a lack of descriptions caused unnecessary confusion
Use of multiple bold colours could be distracting in some instances & further consideration should be given to how the pink colour suggests urgency
The aesthetic of the site is clean and clear which prevents all the information from feeling overwhelming.
Elements of the profile set-up evoked feelings of delight with the lifestyle questions, values and salary expectations proving the most popular.
All participants were excited that the app would suggest personalised ‘Career Matches’ and commented positively on the ‘A Day in the Life of...’ feature.
Based on feedback from user testing I introduced a progression bar for the whole profile set-up process and added in a ‘Save’ button at each stage to enable users to exit the set-up at any point and provide reassurance that they would not lose changes made.
Comments made during testing prompted me to tweak the colours used within the profile set-up to ensure they were appropriate for the information presented and not distracting from the task in hand.
User testing highlighted how easily words can be interpreted differently and the need to reduce ambiguity wherever possible. After trying to give certain features more interesting titles I ended up going back to the simplest, most obvious nomenclature for each in order to improve universal understanding.
