Careergram is a research project part of the UCI Design and Partnership Lab. The goal of Careergram is to help young people develop deeper identities toward career pathways by mapping out the aspects of experiences about careers, identity, and self around which young people develop their occupational identity over their lifetimes.
Role
Designer – Visual Identity, User Experience, Interaction Design, Design Systems
Team
Jessica Cai, Jenny Han, Sharon Ma, Minh Nguyen
Advised by June Ahn
Problem
Many young people encounter challenges with defining their occupational identity, a crucial aspect that shapes their perception of future career paths. Students will tend to seek career guidance from mentors, yet it can be difficult to come up with effective questions and conversation starters to help them define their occupational identity. Additionally, mentors may struggle with accurately understanding students' needs and goals, making it difficult to offer proper guidance and advice.
How might we help young people develop deeper identities toward career pathways by fostering stronger connections between mentees and mentors?
Solution
Careergram aims to foster stronger connections between mentors and mentees by using short surveys to collect formative data from students. These surveys are based on five practical measures defined by the AXCIS Project. The data is analyzed using large language models to provide actionable insights and questions for students to discuss with their mentors. By doing so, this helps both mentors and mentees uncover information about career goals and values to provoke more engaging conversations.
Refining the Survey Questions
One of our first steps was to refine the survey questions based on the five practical measures to encourage better reflection from students and better analysis from the large language model.
During this process, we acknowledged that our analysis is not meant to provide students with the answers, but rather to spur insights and conversation topics during in-person meetings, which led to including action items for students to pursue after reading their insights.
Visual Identity
For our brand’s visual identity and design system, I focused on embodying a playful, bold, and fun spirit, drawing inspiration from tangrams typically found in the classroom. The design system was also based on Tailwind CSS and Tremor UI to allow for easy handoff to developers.
Our design system includes various colors, including those for our branding and individual practical measures. It was a point of emphasis to be clear and consistent with color usage to ensure color contrast meets the WCAG 2 AAA threshold throughout the designs.
Design Details
Survey Input
A key area of focus was making sure the survey inputs were clear and straightforward in order to get accurate information for data analysis. The survey inputs varied from audio response, free response, and scale-based response.
Call To Actions
To help facilitate mentor-mentee interaction, we introduced action items, such as reflection tasks based on their insights and suggested questions to ask their mentor. It was important to emphasize these sections so students would not miss them.
Student Insights
To communicate student insights, it was important that the information was presented in a clear and engaging format to make it easily understandable for both mentors and mentees.
Copywriting
We also focused on writing the copy to incorporate a youthful and playful tone, catering to a young audience and increasing engagement for users as they read through their insights.
Loading Indicators
Because Careergram includes AI analysis to process data, it was important to communicate loading statuses and engage users during long loading periods.
Validating Designs
As a student, it was easy to understand the mentee perspective, but we were lacking insights from mentors. We interviewed a mentor from UCI’s Sage Scholars Program where we were able to validate our design decisions and get a better understanding of how mentors might interpret students’ insights.
Additionally, I conducted user testing with two users to polish the user interactions and flow. One major pain point was the interaction for adding new Careergrams. Based on this feedback, I added a hover interaction to make adding new Careergrams more intuitive.
Reflection
During my time on this project, I learned the importance of communicating and consistently sharing what I'm working on. This helped iterate quickly and keep everyone on the same page. Additionally, I learned different ways of asking for feedback based on where I am in the design process. Moving forward, I hope to use these skills in future projects!