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Evaluation

[martysnyder]

Implementation pt. 2

This week we worked on refining our value proposition and presentation, as well as addressed some of the feedback we got from our last session. As we continue to dig deeper into our product, we are finding there are so many more opportunities than we initially conceived. The following material if from our shared Google doc. We are definitely making great headway. 

Problem Statement

How might we centralize resources and real-world advice to help high school students explore and discover career interests?

High school students will benefit from an engaging, centralized resource to discover opportunities with real-world perspectives in order to empower their career decisions.

MVP

An AI-powered platform to explore careers based on your interests and skills.

Feedback

Making the product equitable - refine the business model and clarify sponsorship process 

How do we lean into this idea of breaking the stereotypical norms about certain fields?

Explore multiple entry points into one career path and showcase diversity

Incorporate location aspect for career and industry recommendations

Think about how to solve for one area really well and then scale 

Iteration

How you and your team spent the week iterating on your solution?

We created a user journey/flow

Refining branding and colors

Defining every feature of the platform and evaluate for our core audience (students) 

Swipe-a-career (random career generator), Onboarding V1 and Onboarding V2

Explore page (Trending careers, Salary Range, Degree Requirements)

Career details page

How it’s made series

What were some of the success, and failure points? 

Successes:

Adding the video format to the explore page

Creating a unique onboarding experience for different proto personas 

Iterating over Career Roulette function, into Swipe-a-career

Honed in on viable sources of revenue

Refined our value proposition and where we belong in the market 

Failures

We’re working on the branding more 

Show the finished mock ups to high school students?

Did you have to pivot your idea? 

We did not pivot too drastically, but we did expand upon certain features that were previously limited. 

We improved on the Career roulette idea (now Swipe-a-Career). Instead of mindlessly generating careers, the feature learns from how the user interacts with it via an indication of “liking” or “disliking.” As a result, the feature learns from the user and generates more content that they are likely to be interested in. This created a personalized and engaging experience for the student. 

We improved the onboarding experience for different user types. For users who have an idea of what types of careers they may be interested in, instead of entering those details manually, as we had previously designed in our prototype, they now choose from a bank of interests/options. This will improve the user response as well as increase the output of relevant suggestions/information from the platform. 

How did you generate visual assets for your solution? 

Iterated on Figma designs based on class feedback

Created user flow chart to establish different entry points

Combined the current two versions of the Explore page

How can you put these to use in your final presentation materials and to further your collective ideas to realize your solution? 

Apply the user flow to personas 

Visuals will be helpful in crafting the narrative for final presentation

Mission statement and “About” page on our platform will be useful in portraying our goals for the platform during our presentation. 

Methods & Techniques 

Follow the Data

Interviewed 5 more students and collected data  

Re-evaluated the revenue model 

Reconsider the User 

Created a user journey with the proto personas in mind

Consider why users would begin using our platform?

How do we make the platform fun in order to compete with social media sites for user’s attention?

Play the contrarian

Why would students want to use the platform?

Why would companies want to partner with us? 

Does it make sense to advertise jobs to high school students?

What about students who don’t want to/can’t pursue higher education, how do they fit in?

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Implementation

Culled from our shared Google doc:

Digital platform: “Pinterest for Careers” How will you build your solution? What does it look like?

Landing page Onboarding flow Explore pageCareer Detail pageHow it’s made

Career GeneratorFor Educators (FUTURE)

How does it serve the audience you have selected? How can you begin to iterate on your earlier ideas?

Value Proposition Time & Task  The Advocate

What’s our 1 minute elevator pitch for the product? 

Wireframes & Prototypes  Go to market strategy Problem Statement

How might we centralize resources and real-world advice to help high school students explore and discover career interests?

High school students will benefit from an engaging, centralized resource to discover opportunities with real-world perspectives in order to empower their career decisions.

Final Selection

A web application that aims to be the one-stop resource for all students exploring careers. It is built on the collaboration and input of companies and the online community of working professionals. It will provide written perspectives, engaging social media content, upvoted learning opportunities (books, online courses, etc…), and other features. It is feature-modular, meaning this platform can function with core features and then be extended later with others. It is tuned to help students, but can potentially equip educators with career exploration resources.

Feedback

What is the unique thing that we're offering? Is it the opportunity to step into the job and try it out?

There are many different features to this solution, so what is the one thing that you are known for as people start to expect an experience from this platform?

This is an aggregator and hub solution for information, is that what your audience is looking for/needs? It seems like students are already overwhelmed.

The data points/content we're sharing (that we create rather than partners), how do ensure that it's accurate and fair?

Mock up feedback

What is the relationship that we're communicating with our audience and How is that visualized in the brand assets?

Need a hierarchy of experience, not just graphic content

Prototype Documentation

Now that you have selected your solution; keep sketching and refining your concept. Document your activities in the digital platform.

Web platform (Jamstack)

Curate existing digital content (video format)

Provide curated, vetted, and community-approved career content

Figma mock ups

Drawing information from tik tok, glassdoor, instagram/IGTV, and others

Discuss features of the platform

Mission Statement

Address current problems of existing implementation

Address the importance of career exploration

Call-to-action that leads to Onboarding or Exploration page

An un-intimidating, and welcoming landing page

Instructs you to answer some basic questions about your demographic/intended use for the site

Don’t know what you’re interested in? Click a button to see some options.

Shows different hobbies, interests that users can select.

Already know what youre into? Enter them here.

Instructs you to type in any interests, hobbies, activities... then surfaces traits or characteristics of activity. Traits are clicked on and will lead to keyword results with corresponding career content.

A discovery engine with an engaging explore page

Students can search by keywords or hashtags through a library of content

Each piece of content is tagged (Industry, job, skills, etc.) 

The product emphasis is on exploration, while the content emphasis is on real world perspectives 

Students can save videos that pique their interest or spark inspiration

Students can refer back to their saved videos and interests on their profile

Incorporate machine learning to make recommendations for more video content 

While watching video, students can click on more detailed career pages

Roadmap of career

Salary ranges

Day-to-day tasks

Companies

YouTube channels

Slack communities

Reddit AMA's with students (calendar of upcoming people in the industry)

eLearning opportunities

Books & Articles

Hobbies that would go along well

Starter projects (ex: template Figma files)

Related careers

Internships

Partner with companies to showcase and explain what goes into making one of their products (Nike shoes, IKEA furniture, anything you can think of)

Interactive infographic or web animation of each job role that plays a part in making it a success

You can click on a role and then be redirected to the career detail page

Users can explore careers with minimum effort. Simply click a button to stumble upon a career at random. Uninterested? Click again and generate another. 

Allows high school students to explore traditional and non-traditional careers

Connects students with careers and interests through AI & ML

Acts as the definitive career encyclopedia by providing...

Community-vetted resources and information

Real-world perspectives

Indirect access to working professionals and companies

Tools and activities for counselors and teachers to interact and engage with students

Solves a problem that we discovered from the surveys, that current resources/website didn’t provide appealing or interesting career options 

Usability testing with real content examples

Get feedback from real users then adjust design decisions

Curated exploration, unheard of or unusual careers, paired with real perspectives (makes us unlike any other career search/discovery resource) 

Centralized platform (one-stop shop)

Career Equality - showcase both tradition and non-traditional careers as the professional world evolves

Nurtures discovery and exploration rather than forcing users to choose, or categorizing them into careers.

Methods & Techniques

Design user interface -> Wireframes 

User onboarding flow

Explore page experience 

User doing deeper research about a career they are interested in

Gather existing content to populate the platform 

What are the rules/steps for using videos from tiktok, instagram, youtube, etc.?

How many videos do we need to launch?

Is this a manual process done by the team or can we automate it? 

Do we develop criteria for videos making it on the site? If so, how? 

Build working prototypes

Find developers to bring it to life 

Usability testing

Create different onboarding flows for students and test 

We are creating a discovery engine for high school students to explore diverse careers and industries during these formative years. We plan to use primarily short form video content that provides real perspectives, insights, and advice in a snackable and GenZ appropriate format. Our vision for this product is a user-centric digital platform, allowing high school students to consume, save, and share this content.  

Explore page example: https://www.figma.com/file/1zHw9I9SIx0jF0TYhnCHKa/Discoverly-Wireframe?node-id=0%3A1

Overall Product:

https://www.figma.com/file/5sZXiojkXw6KDYjU2MG1Hl/Untitled?node-id=165%3A82

Ensure there is sufficient content on the site

Establish KPI’s (key performance indicators)

Launch a beta site (constrain network growth to a single school)

Invite focus groups/influencers to participate; Having influential students on the network quickly will increase the appeal of giraffe, making it a must-goto for students who want to learn about careers (and connect with potential advisors/mentors?)

Once website/systems are functioning as intended, focus on growth - registering as many new users as possible. 

Give 10 super users inviting 10 more users (network effect) 

Focus on organic, homepage signup over email invite

Once there are x users, kick off monetization efforts with ads, job listings, and freemium subscription models (enhanced communications and search capability?)

Focus on virality

Relentless testing and tweaking of flows --> improving the registration and invitation process

Making career videos public in order to create big traffic and acquisition gains aka indexing career profiles. (e.g. Career profiles showing up in search results will put giraffe in front of more and more people → once people click into the site from search, have them sign up for giraffe before they can view more content? 

Launch Influencer program. Select “thought leaders/professionals” to create and share content directly with users, exclusively on giraffe.

MARKET SIZE

The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 20-24% of Americans change jobs every year (ADP global research says it's 27%), which means more than 41 million people are searching for jobs and being recruited into jobs every single year (in the US alone).

Because we are a hybrid model, we looked at e-learning as well as the recruting market. The global E-learning Market is expected to reach USD 374.3 Billion by 2026, while Recruiting is a $200 Billion industry.

DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS

giraffe website

Promotional blogs/videos on social media

Blog content with links to the resources

A custom landing page on a paid media campaign

SEO/PPC

KEY PARTNERS

Educational institutions 

Corporations

Third-party sellers 

Publishers

Digital content producers 

VALUE PROPOSITION

Simplifying search process

IMPLEMENTATION

API's

Glassdoor for directory and review of companies

niche.com for college majors

Instagram for career videos 

TikTok to integrate how-to job videos

Amazon for book recommendations

TECH STACK

Amazon S3 (file storage)

Google Firebase (database)

Strapi (backend CMS -- this communicates with database and front-end)

NextJS (ReactJS framework)

Netlify (serverless cloud hosting)

TAGLINES

Helping you define success

COMPETITION

https://www.schoolnewsnetwork.org/2020/06/24/virtual-career-exploration-a-hit-with-students/

Virtualjobshadow https://www.virtualjobshadow.com/

Cuecareer (VR)  https://www.cuecareer.com/

I Could Be https://www.icouldbe.org/

VR nearpod https://nearpod.com/college-and-career-readiness

WOKEN https://www.iamwoken.com/

MavinGlobal http://www.mavinglobal.com/

Colorado Success https://coloradosucceeds.org/work-based-learning-roadmap/career-awareness/

O*NET https://www.onetonline.org/

[martysnyder]

Ideation

Ideation is unlocking creativity through unfiltered, non-judgmental thinking; It’s  a process of opening ones mind to accept what comes... An opportunity to explore concepts, images... There are different ways to access this divergent process: running, resting, drinking, listening to music, sitting in silence. There are no limits to where ideas can be accessed. It’s an opportunity to extract from ones self something that can manifest into beautiful realms.  

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Definition

We took a circuitous path, came upon multiple dead ends, and (somewhat) arrived at defining our problem statement - High school students desire an engaging means to explore and discover careers that embody their interests and ambitions. They lack a centralized resource with real-world perspectives that can can help shape their career decisions. After a series of divergent processes we began to converge on our problem by defining our target audience, specifically age demographic. I would say we all started with a combination of paraphrasing connections and personal analogies. All of us, having been high school students, found ways to relate the problem to our experiences. Thereafter we employed the talk it out/ write it out. During our group meeting we each took time to express in writing what we felt, as individuals, the main problem was. We all sort of came to the same definition, but some of us, like myself, were more mission driven, as opposed to the specifics of what and how we would solve our problem. We ultimately settled on something more concrete/tangible. 

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Analysis

How do I analyze a problem before exploring a solution? I think about it, try to make sense of it, research it, look at it from a micro and global perspective, think of the audience... I write it down, I google it, I read about it, I ask myself: is this something I want to spend my time on? Why? The why is always the most important. I look at the problem from different perspectives: Am I the right person to take on this challenge? Through research and contemplation I begin to gather insights. How is this problem currently being solved? Or is it? If so, how can I do it better? If not, how can I solve it? Even after accepting a challenge, I ask myself, is this problem still worth addressing? 

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Acceptance

Too many of us have gone through school and wind up unable to figure out our professional ambitions. How can we create a solution that guides young individuals to explore their interests and be open-minded about interests they are unfamiliar with? How can we create a paradigm shift from “I have to go to work” to “I get to go to work”? How wonderful would it be if teenagers had role models beyond celebrities, “influencers,” and athletes? Imagine an organized platform where they can explore careers and view relevant content about those professions? Imagine how many more possibilities they would learn about? Data science, UX design, advertising executive, business strategist, chemical engineering? I’d always wish I had a place, or person, unfettered by opinion or pressure, to explore opportunities and perhaps even travel a path I may never have been aware of... 

[martysnyder]

A wall can’t stop love.

https://www.printmag.com/post/teeter-totter-wall-beazley-design-of-the-year-winner

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Loving the book that accompanies this exhibition. 

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The Kills - Raise Me (Demo) (Official Video)

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Feeling nostalgic... And the animation in this video! Wow.

[martysnyder]

Exploring Creativity

Creativity is like the ocean; both places of wonderment, whose mysteries are concealed in the crags and coral that languidly flow. Like the ocean's tides and the winds that brush against its surface, creativity is ever-changing and mercurial. Creativity is like the ocean; able to unleash a fury to sink ships, or breathe benevolent passage to places unknown. It is vast, infinite, and dark in its beauty, offering hope and possibility. Abundant and generous, it is the lifeblood to us and our planet.

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[martysnyder]

“Surrealist art, with its convulsive, outlandish juxtapositions, showed Carrington how to discern the folly of the humans she knew.”

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Vibes

Houses