A Career Guide: Hackathon case study
Helping students make the right career choice!
Nowadays, the young generation is intuitive and quick at finding information online and career is one aspect that is challenging for the students at the two most important stages i.e. in their 10th and 12th. This is a problem that we picked to solve in our hackathon. Many people miss out on the less appreciated field as many are in rat-race of life, so my team and I decided that this is the problem that we want to address, helping students understand what they are good at studying in existing career options and sacrificing our sleep for 48 hours was worth the effort. 😴💪🏻
The most interesting reasons why this problem needs to be solved…
We have suffered through the same problems and we connect with the statement on a personal level. Given that most of us are Engineers have always heard that “Engineer ban jao, phir Aish hi hai”.
Initial reasons and how we hope we can solve this problem💡
- Common Problem
The problem is widespread among the students, most of the students/parents are not aware of the other available courses in various fields than engineering, arts, and medicine. We as a team feel this problem should be solved more on a personal level since we have all been victims of “the engineering wave”. PS- but we didn't let our mindset get in the way.
- Critical Decisioning
It is not possible to know everything. But when making life-altering decisions, one must know what favorable options they have and how they would turn out to be.
- Awareness
Also, one cannot know all about their own potential, talents, and interests from a long-term perspective concerning the future, therefore students end up working towards an unfulfilling life without concrete goals. One must be not completely but as much as possible be aware of the possible fields he can work towards. One effective way on top of our minds was an aptitude test.
Our first stop: Desk research👓
Our problem statement clearly states that the students of 10th and 12th are unclear of their career choices, and as history states, many do engineering for the mere reason that they think it's best for them. To come up with a solution for such students.
What we want to understand
- The challenges faced picking a branch by students during 10th and 12th.
- Students awareness of the subjects from the existing sources, and
- What could be the student's criteria to get to their choice of career path as per their own qualities and capabilities.
Desk research: The summary
We have come across 5 such articles that have provided us with some statistical data and information on the mindset of a student when he picks up a particular stream or college. A lot of our findings show that many are driven by their parents and are comfortable, but also many show that they are under societal pressure for career choices.
Do 10th and 12th students actively use career counseling?
- Factually we learned, that every year nearly 32 lakhs of students appear for the 10th board exams.
- Behaviorally we feel, that the common mistake while choosing a career is following the crowd, and many decisions are based on parental pressure.
Only 93% of Indian students are aware of just seven career options, why?
- We learned that among Indian students, not more than 7 or 10 career options are known whereas there are actually more than 250 options available.
- Behaviorally we feel, that students feel pressured to “ find and pursue their passion”.
- They consider a career which their friends have picked or as their parents desire.
What problems do students in India face while selecting an institution for higher education?
Factually we learned, that even though in India there are nearly 4 million graduates every year, not every student gets their desired job or college post 10th or 12th.
Behaviorally we feel, that there are many problems every year which Indian students face while selecting a college. Many of the students out there select colleges which are either suggested by their parents or their colleagues.
In Short from our desk research, we understand that every year nearly 32 lakhs of students appear for 10th board exams out of which merely 30% are aware of what career they are comfortable in or what they are good at.
Many amongst the 70% pick the career option that is either preferred by their peers or what their parents select for them.
Students feel pressured to find and pursue their passion.
They consider a career which their friends or classmates have chosen or as their parents desire. This kind of pressure is very common among students. They feel that their peers are making the right career choice or parents know what’s best for them, even though there are more than a hundred jobs out there for their chosen stream.
We decided to do the competitive analysis as Shiksha and Byjus were one of the main brands in the market with a leading ranking, having a similar product model like ours.
We wanted to focus and target the students in the age of 14–18.
Questionnaire
As a team, we decided that our target users are 10th and 12th class students, hence we are skipping the questionnaire survey round, as we have our set of target users who match the type of users we require to conduct the interviews with.
We had multiple questions but the most interesting questions in my opinion were
- How do you like to explore the higher education options (eg: attending workshops/webinars, a week of hands-on experience, 1:1 counseling
- How do you choose the college that you want to study in? (parents, well-wishers, and so on)
- Factors affecting your decision in the specific career path.
- Do e-learning applications help you with what you’re looking for?
and the insights we received from these questions were
- 1:1 counseling is something they all look prefer as it helps and gain more insights into their chosen career.
- Since many of them don't own a mobile phone they rely on the information given by their parents or information gathered from books in their school libraries.
- Factors that really impact their career decisions are the salary they might expect in the future, or the variety of options later on the subjects opted.
- They have used a couple of e-learning applications to get a better understanding of their possible future opted subjects.
Primary Research: Insights from the Interviews
We were able to find 5 students mix of 10th and 12th std, but have omitted one interview as the user’s input was not helping our research.
Through our primary research, we interviewed 5 students out of which we saw insights from two who helped us understand their pain points in detail.
Ishani, 17 from Mumbai, and super focused on career
She believes that 1:1 counseling is really helpful while using e-learning applications. She understands her career goal and wants to understand more about the field.
- The career path is decided by herself and her family
- Also checks out which courses are available and demand, co-curricular activities also reference passed out students.
- Also looks out how much that career helps her in getting a good amount salary
In order to learn about the preparatory exams for the colleges and jobs, she would need guidance from an expert which she finds lacking in current e-learning apps.
Shreeja, 17 from Pune, and slightly dicey about her choices
She has been very well acquainted with sources online for picking the right career choice but somehow feels that it is not enough data to pick the right one.
- Has been using Byjus for a while, likes to explore new career options and learn.
- Needs guidance from a professional for all the choices of subjects she wants to study.
- Unsure about her career, and would want to understand the best career path based on her capabilities.
Shreeja is not entirely a self-driven girl, like many other students (based on our desk research) she's the one who needs at most guidance and clarity as to what she can be and want to be in the FUTURE.
Group Analysis:
Based on our key findings from the interviews and research conducted we have been able to find groups in which we can divide our users into. We have analyzed a pattern of user behavior and similar behavior patterns were seen in multiple users. Hence, we have combined our users to form a small number of user groups.
Known as Puzzled, Career Driven, and Dependent
🧩Puzzled is the students who are unsure of what they want, vs what they are capable of🧩
🚗Career-driven are very much clear as to what they want to do in their life, many simply need 1:1 counseling to get more information.🚗
🤝The dependent category of students somewhat relies on their parents for choosing their career as it is confusing, but mostly also have an idea as to which path they wanna head on to, hence having traits of both Career-driven and Puzzled.🤝
User Persona: The execution
Now that we understand the users, we have derived 2 personas from the above empathy maps. We noticed that group-dependent has similar traits of group career-driven and group puzzled combined. In the persona below we can identify the number of frustrations, which have helped us in bringing out a better solution-driven application.
Hence, we have only two kinds of personas one being Career-Driven and another Dependent.
In a nutshell,
Career-driven are eager to learn and explore and know exactly what they want in life, they are the ones whose source of understanding of the subject comes from their parents or the books they receive in schools.
Whereas, the Puzzled type are the ones who lack clarity in their career options, and are eager to explore but find it difficult to reach out to the right and trustworthy source for information, when asked “why not seek help from their parents”, they are also uncertain about it and not unable to make up their mind.
Blueprint of our UX strategy
As a team, we came up with the user flow for our application. In this, we added some new features that would help the user resolve their existing issues and educate them with more content. The user flow is very simple and just with few clicks, one can get all the guidance and information they require.
Reframing the Problem Statement on basis of HOW MIGHT WE questions!
- How Might We help the user gain large knowledge with a minimal fee?
- How Might We provide counseling to the students within the app?
- How Might We provide every information of the courses within the app?
- How Might We provide information for the users on the opportunities & scope of their interest?
- How Might We help users to get some hands-on experience on the career path?
- How Might We help users with some relevant information through videos
- How Might We provide professional guidance to the users?
- How Might We help Puzzled users who are unclear of what to choose for their career?
Key Features of Our Product
- Various college options & courses
- Informing about colleges available as per subject interest also about their fee, scope, and alumni.,
- Live webinars
- Webinars are live by industry experts and volunteers.
- Counseling
- 1:1 personal paid counseling sessions.
- Job Opportunities
- Gather information such as job options with respected courses in schools or colleges, and companies that are recruiting in real-time
Wireframe (Low Fidelity)
We did our wireframe to show the content and layout of our application which takes into account user journey, user needs, and user interface. We have established the key pain points and established on providing better product features.
User Interface
I created a prototype based on the low-fidelity wireframes created on Figma. Our objectives were to find out if the students want to learn or need guidance on specific subjects and if the users understood the features. We looked to assess how the user understands the app to help find a piece of information and also to find the pain points, if any, along the way.
Students can take a test if they didn’t decide their career path and one who decided their career path can directly explore the courses.
The questions are in a format that intrigues the student and the app suggests the courses/field of study according to the answers given by the student
This screen shows the category of available courses, students can select any one or multiple courses and explore colleges, curriculum, opportunities, and develop skills based on the selected course.
The home screen of the app shows recommendations for live webinars, workshops conducted by various experts. section for Articles shows related content for future opportunities and scope of available courses and the video section has experts talks on a certain field of study and career guidance
After selecting the stream, students can get information related to top colleges, their curriculum, and can even take beginner courses to get some awareness of a particular stream.
Students can book/message an expert in their related field to get their doubts clarified.
One can book a slot with time and can go on with the session.
Conclusion
As a team we learned to prioritize the feature and user needs, we gathered information about user problems which helped us create our keys features.
Our special learning from the Hackathon was a team effort and time management. Even though the last few tasks were unfinished such as the prototype. we have as a team delivered everything with a whole heart.
Hey Guys,
so later I realized that the user interface we created during our hackathon needed some polishing. Hence I took the liberty on my end to recreate the screens with some visual enhancements and functionality, this is my take on the UI.
I have added one more screen where the student must select which standard he is in order to receive the possible subjects that he can opt for after his school.
Conclusion
Going forward I planned on working more towards the blueprint of the application and making the application user-friendly with regards to the pain points of the users and making more iterations for a better user experience.
