Role
Product Designer
Scope
Resonating deeply with my situation at the time, I designed an app to elevate the mentorship experience for new grads, connecting them with guidance, opportunities, and career success.
Timeline
3 months
Jan - Apr 2022
All my life, I’ve wondered and pondered on career options dreaming of a creative career but finding myself in an unrelated field. If you’ve ever felt the same—whether exploring or certain of your path—you understand the fear of the unknown. There’s a sense of loss in the unknown and owlhouse was my case study At BrainStation that deeply reflected my own experiences at the time.
Early Inspiration:
Missing Opportunity:
A generation capped of opportunities
Underprepared for careers, overwhelmed by uncertainty. More than half of Gen Z college students in North America don’t feel prepared going into their careers.
College Pulse Survey 2020
Who is Gen Z?
Gen Z comprises of the age groups in the new digital age between 1997 and 2012. They grew up with the internet, social media, and smartphones, making them highly tech-savvy. They are ambitious, digital-native students and grads who are value-driven and prioritize career clarity and meaningful connections to navigate an ever evolving job market.
Why are they important?
Not only are they the leaders shaping the future workforce, Gen Zs also comprise of 26% of the global population. They play a key role in shaping industries with their tech-savviness, adaptability, and demand for skill-building in careers, driving innovation in how companies attract, retain, and support talent.
This makes career platforms in guiding them through the uncertainty of career development essential.
Space for improvement:
Networking is lost, but connection is more essential than ever
Gen Zs desire to spearhead their career and find value driven work presents opportunities to create experiences within career platforms that support their need for guidance, connection, and professional development.
Unmet needs:
Connecting education and career success
To support Gen Z’s need for career exposure and participation, personas were created to understand college students’ experiences so that they could improve their transition into the workforce with confidence.
Anxious Student
Constant extracurricular scout
Desires specific skills
Competitive market, inferior
Lack of time management leading to easy burnout and lack of control
Curious Student
Open to exploring opportunities
Random work experience
Many desired skills
Career uncertainty and limitations
Overwhelming career paths and little support
Emerging opportunity for career networking
Clarity for industry standards through mentorship and networking services can be provided to promote career success.
Early Ideation:
Task flows, sketches and greyscale wireframes
When designing the initial app, task flows, vision boards, and sketches were created to help visualize the interface. The early designs included 4 sketches leading to low-to-mid scale grey wireframes with over 100 iterations from user testing through prototype walkthroughs and A/B testing.
The home screen begins to address some primary needs by surfacing networking opportunities specific to users needs. However, it is missing context and design principles for optimal use. Keeping user friendly interfaces in mind, simplicity was a core focus throughout the design process.
Mentor profiles were initially designed with general layouts without any context or personalization. The designs were changed to reflect a more realistic profile to benefit users so that they could better review and understand mentors.
Delivering a mvp:
Designing for accessibility, functionality, and scalability
Creating an app for users to easily discover and engage with all types of networking opportunities was ultimately the design goal. Using Adobe Accessibility Checker to minimize branding errors while keeping consistent layouts that were scalable for product shipping and future iterations were priority during the designing of owlhouse.
Flexible Mentorship: 1:1 Bookings and Group Sessions
The home screen was designed to include only what was necessary in order for users to navigate efficiently through their task.
To drive a sense of urgency and increase user engagement a live activity bar for bookings was added.
Tailored Selections for Every User’s Career Journey
Each screen was designed with a single CTA to reduce cognitive load, streamline the user journey, and help users make confident decisions with ease.
Professions, job fields, and career topics were specific to reflect the most desired needs based on user research.
Powered by Search Engines, Mentors are listed by Recommendations
Mentors are displayed based on hierarchy, user preferences, and compatibility.
Features allowing users to save mentors for future reference and added suggestive text in search bars were made to help users find their ideal match more efficiently.
Users can explore mentors’ strengths, skillsets, and interests prior to requesting a booking to get the maximum benefit of connecting.
To provide feedback and improvements, reviews are available for mentors and users alike to assess performance.
Do More than just Network
UI Library:
Atomic Design System
Results:
Challenges and Next Steps
Continuous feedback drove hundreds of iterations, refining the platform to adapt to evolving user behaviours. This process underscored the importance of iterative design and user insights in creating an intuitive experience. Next steps include building social rooms to foster community and collaboration, enhancing personalization, and integrating advanced analytics to align with user needs.