Mission: Improving the experience of students looking for an internship
My role: I participated in the entire process as a normal team member.
Team: Ruben Rodrigues, Ella Hillered, Pavel Lehmbeck, Nina Montalban, Jessica Andersson.
Duration: 5 weeks.
Client: Hyper Island.
The Challenge
During this project, my group was responsible to come up with a solution that improved the experience of students looking for an internship
The Process
We have conducted a few exercises to help us better understand the challenge, how to prioritize user needs, and, how to come up with useful features.
Starting by making a "How might we" as you can see here bellow:
How might we...
- create support for students looking for an internship?
- help students grow personally on their internship?
- help students find the perfect match?
Since all the "How might we" were deeply connected with students’ needs and their feelings, we chose to build an empathy map so we started with quick Starbucks interviews with a few colleagues:
Some quotes from the users.
After the exploratory fieldwork, we build the following empathy map:
This empathy map shows Anna as a fictional average student after doing interviews with a few students
The main learning was that putting together a portfolio is the main struggle for the users.
So we have come up with the following problem statement:
Problem Statement
What: Students don't know how to start and structure their portfolios.
Why: They need to reduce stress, gain confidence, feel good with the process.
How: Give students a structure to follow, what to put in the portfolio and how to start it.
We did Card Sorting interviews in order to prioritize the problems in a funny and easy way, this process was recorded and transcribed in order to do a further analysis of that data.
"Getting started" with the portfolio and sorting "documentation" was the most difficult part as you can see bellow here:
"Getting Started" and have "Documentation" was the most complex on the process of compose a portfólio.
Ideation
We realized that the best solution would be a mobile app that is always close to the student; with easy & quick access, which guides providing examples of how to do, and, why is it important.
So the student can use the phone as a second screen and receive notifications in order to reach his goals.
Inspired by a 30 days challenge we have come up with "30-days UX Portfolio challenge".
The Solution
Helping to structure the process of putting together a portfolio, from beginning to end, and solving the most difficult step on the user's journey - getting started.
We start by quickly explaining the app to the users with a screen and then we allow them to adjust their work pace, considering how long they have to do the portfolio and how many times they would like to be reminded of their tasks
This prototype is the solution to the students' needs! Having as main features to split the advice and consult it.
Designed by the team in January 2020
Here is a prototype to test how Figma works and how it would look on an iPhone. Please feel free to request me access as at the moment Figma asks for a fee to have it public.
What have I learned?
I have learned more about the design thinking process, research as well as how to create design patterns for Apps. I also have improved my skills in Figma and prototyping.
What was incredible about this?
I was able to conduct a lot of new research methods while networking with my classmates and connecting with old friends.