EZ Mock: Assess for Success
UX Designer @ University of Toronto Learning Hub
High Fidelity Job Preparation App for University Students
Client
Collaborating with UofT's Learning Hub
UX Team
Summary
The task for this project was to tackle a problem space from one of University of Toronto's five domain sectors and create a medium-fidelity mobile app solution to the problem.
Our group chose the job preparation sector to help support University of Toronto students finding their desired job position.
Our group conducted quantitative and qualitative research, along with utilizing research artifacts (persona, as-is scenario) to design user-centric product that meets the needs of our users.
Aryasatya Wikara, User Research & Prototyping
Harpriya Kaur Sodhi, Product Design
Chao-Chi Ting, Product Design
Shucen Lu
Rui Hu
Xiaojing Liu
Timeline
September 2022 - December 2022
Design Challenge
"How can we help University Students pass their job interview stage?"
The Outcome
Designing a high-fidelity prototype mock interview app that help university students. The outcome of this project is not only to design a high-fi prototype solution but also to ensure that the solution has value to the user, providing a good user experience.
User Interviews (Primary)
From the research question, Our group conducted both qualitative and quantitative research through conducting interviews and questionnaire sampling. Our group collected 22 participants and 3 interviews to begin analyzing our research and formulating our design thinking
After defining the problem statement, our group wanted to hear firsthand our target audience's experiences with their job preparation and the resources they used.
We decided to conduct primary research: interviews and questionnaires to understand firsthand their pain points and experiences
1. What are some things that you realized during your first job preparation experience?
2. What are some of the skills that you found you were lacking when preparing for a job?
3. What are some of the resources that you utilized?
4. Which skills do you think need to be improved
Problem Discovery
"What are the issues that students face when approaching job preparation?"
Key Findings (Thematic Analysis)
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Reliability
No reliable source which students can depend on for feedback.
Performance
Interview questions asked by employers are unknown and challenging.
Research Analysis
So after conducting the research, my group organized all the data into an affinity map to find the main themes of our research.
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Figure 1.0 Brainstorming Sessions based on Research Question
Figure 2.0 Affinity Diagram the Brainstorming session
Persona
Amy Finley, a 21-year-old undergraduate student studying Journalism at the University of Toronto. She is a fourth year student and desires to work in the field but struggles to get her first internship experience. She wants to stand out among applicants to increase confidence during her interviews
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Pain Point
From building the persona and synthesizing the data, the targeted pain point that our group will covering is "Job Interview Struggles", in particular the behavioral section. The struggles include:
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Struggles to figure out what goes with their interview
Goes blank when answering behavioral or situational questions
Ideation
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1. Personalized Mock Interview Sessions
Providing ultimate career readiness through practice modes that users can choose as per their preferences.
2. Customized Questions
Providing users with custom questions to practice, dedicated to specific sections of interviews like behavioral/situational.
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3. Interview Feedback Tracker
Allowing users to track their assessments or analysis reports so that they can reduce chances of committing mistakes in the future.
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4. Share and Connect
Share your mock interview recording to experts, mentor, & colleagues using our share and connect feature .
Revised Problem Statement
"University Students fail to pass the behavioral section of the interview stage due to a lack of feedback"
Design Sprint
Low-Fidelity (Sketches)
We split up to design and test a paper prototype guided by our design vision, research, and experience map. We came up with 3 high-level tasks our app needs to accomplish for users.
1. Record a mock practice session by choosing manual mode
2. Go to reflections and check their first mock session analytics
3. Connect with an expert using the "Explore Mode" and receive feedback
We wanted to create an app that allows University Students to respond to real-job interview questions more interactively and persuasively as if they are talking to friends
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Usability Testing ( Lean Evaluation)
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What can you recall about the screen?
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What can you do on this screen?
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What caught your attention on this screen?
So after creating the low-fi sketches we decided to do a user test on the low-fi prototype. We conducted the 5-second-test along with the Think-A-Loud observation to 5 participants.
User Metrics
Elements Recalled
Are users able to easily understand the function of our prototype screens?
5-Second-Test (Testing #1)
Think-A-Loud (Testing #2)
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Participants are asked to record a video interview from the Automatic mode and complete it
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Participants are asked to record an audio interview from the Manual mode and complete it
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Participants are asked to check their first interview assessment
User Satisfaction
Are users able to navigate the prototype to gain and track feedback?
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Findings from UT
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Overwhelming information on screens
Remove unnecessary information and spread out functions into different screens
Elements cramped/ Not enough whitespace in between
Space out elements /include content into shaped elements
Final Design
Personalized Mock Interview Sessions
Providing ultimate career readiness through practice modes that users can choose as per their preferences.
Automated Analysis & Feedback
Facilitating users to analyze their skills through automated reports, capturing parameters essential to nail an interview.
Connect for Sucess
Providing users with a global network of experts, colleagues, mentors, allowing users to connect and reach out to them
What We Learned
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Adapting to User Behaviors
Understand the continuous changes in user behaviors. Our group had to make continuous changes in the user flows and global navigation.
The Complexity of Design Process
We learned that products don't come in a vacuum. It requires multiple iterations of design processes to develop the right solution for the users.
Collaborative Skills and Building Empathy
Working with six other designers was definitely a new experience for us. We had to learn about working together as a group and accepting diverse perspectives and ideas. We learned to show empathy to our client and to each of our group members, supporting each others' flaws.
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