Project Overview
The Problem
A large percentage of young adults cannot afford higher education and need a chance to start a professional career. We’ve identified a lack of options for young people to begin their professional development completely free.
The Goal
Design an app and website that will provide young adults the basic knowledge to jumpstart their professional development.
The Product
Skills for Young Adults is a project focused on giving young adults who can’t afford College education a chance to start a career by providing professional online training. This type of training can help young adults get entry-level jobs in different areas.
My Role
UX designer leading the app and responsive website from conception to delivery.
Responsabilities
Conducting interviews, paper and digital wire framing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, iterations on designs, determining information architecture, and responsive design.
Project duration
November, 2021 to December, 2021
Understanding the user
I conducted user interviews, where most participants were in actual need of a platform to access professional training. The feedback received through research made it very clear that users were very interested in obtaining an actual education via online and would find the app useful in their life.
Persona & problem statement
Mario is a young man who needs free professional training because he wants to get a job in the service industry.
Gina is a busy waitress who needs to find and option to get professional training at her own pase because she finds it hard to balance her work and study schedules.
Competitive audit
An audit of a few competitor’s products provided direction on gaps and opportunities to address with the Skills For Young Adults app.
Ideation
I did a quick ideation exercise to come up with ideas for how to address gaps identified in the competitive audit. My focus was specifically on making the experience easy for people with different backgrounds
Starting the desing
Digital wireframes
After ideating and drafting
some paper wireframes, I
created the initial designs for
the Skills For Young Adults
app.
These designs focused on
the principal user flow to start
their first course.
Low-fidelity prototype
To prepare for usability testing, I
created a low-fidelity prototype that
connected the user flow of viewing
the description of a course, and
beginning watching the videos.
View
Skills for Young Adults low-fidelity prototype
Usability study: findings
These were the main findings uncovered by the usability study
1. Accessability
People need easy access to the courses.
2. Personalized
People preferred to have easier access to their personalized features in app.
3. Shortcuts
People need easy access to information from different parts of the app.
Refining the desing
Mockups
Based on the insights from the usability studies, I applied design changes like adding a static navigation bar allowing users to access to information and personalized features.
Mockups:
High-fidelity Prototype
The high-fidelity prototype
followed the same user flow
as the low-fidelity prototype,
including design changes
made after the usability
study.
View the
Skills For Young Adults high-fidelity prototype.
Responsive designs
The designs for screen size variation included mobile and desktop. I optimized the designs to fit specific user needs of each device and screen size.
Takeaways
Impact:
Users shared that the app made skill learning seem like something they could actually use to continue their professional development, being an easy way to grow in their careers or even change career paths.
What I learned:
I learned that users all had different needs in very specific situations, and that it was always possible to find one solution to fix different problems, through various creative exercises, I was able to find solutions to make the user experience better for all of them.