ExploreCareers
Team Lead (Sep 2023 - Apr 2024)
1. Introduction
Navigating career options can be overwhelming for young people, and even those who have chosen their career paths often struggle to find relevant information. At the Tech4Good Lab, I explored this challenge by investigating how students interact with different career exploration resources and identifying where these tools fall short. For example:
Online career databases provide useful statistics and data, but lack context from human experiences.
Social media content, such as day-in-the-life videos, offers entertaining firsthand perspectives, but doesn't include structured guidance and data.
Traditional career fairs and counseling can feel broad and generic, often failing to support students' individual interests and needs.
Goals
As someone who once felt lost when thinking about my career path, I was excited to design something that would have made a difference for me growing up. Our team at Tech4Good aimed to:
Understand how students interact with different career resources to identify patterns, gaps, and opportunities for support.
Design a tool that integrates the strengths of different resources while addressing their limitations. Since resources are scattered throughout various platforms and media formats, they can be difficult for students to access and navigate.
Role
- I joined the project during its early stages, where I played a key role in analyzing literature and preparing materials for research studies.
- Drawing from our findings, I helped design an innovative career exploration tool tailored to student needs.
- As I became more familiar with research and design processes, I challenged myself to take on greater responsibility by stepping into a co-lead role. As co-lead, I planned out quarterly goals, ensured weekly deliverables were met, facilitated work sessions, and onboarded new team members each quarter.
ExploreCareers: A Meaningful and Engaging Journey
We created ExploreCareers, a tool that combines information from social media career content and career databases and personalizes it for individual students. Specifically, it pairs day-in-the-life TikToks with government-provided occupational data, and offers personalized guidance that helps young people develop their understanding of numerous career options. Students who tested ExploreCareers reported that it helped them discover new careers, access relevant information, and reflect on their goals.
2. Choosing Sources of Information
Throughout the design process, I helped conduct research to understand what types of informational resources students find most valuable for career exploration. Our interviews with high school participants revealed that day-in-the-life videos, supplemented by database information, can help students get a better understanding of their career options. And so, we explored ways to integrate them both into ExploreCareers.
- Typically provide insight into daily responsibilities, work environment, and personal experiences
- Accessible and engaging
Day-in-the-life TikToks
- Typically provide insight into income, education, and skills
- We decided to use a government database for its reliability and standardization
Occupational Database
3. Navigating Unforeseen Challenges
Initially, we envisioned a process where students would watch a day-in-the-life career TikTok, reflect on their thoughts with a TikTok chatbot, and then access the ExploreCareers platform to view occupational data. We validated this by conducting pilot studies, for which I prepared survey and interview materials and documented participant responses. However, after speaking with developers, we realized TikTok's API wouldn't support the chatbot integration. Since reflection plays a crucial role in career exploration, we adapted by integrating the reflection questions directly into the ExploreCareers platform instead.
4. Organizing and Presenting Information
Throughout multiple iterations, I experimented with different ways to present the information while prioritizing simplicity and ease of navigation. To avoid overwhelming students with large amounts of information, we decided the dashboard would only show a curated selection of occupations, tailored to each student's individual interests.
- Distinguishing the career sectors: I used a grid layout, along with different colors and icons for each career sector, to help students understand the hierarchy and relationship between each sector and the occupations within them.
- Playful and colorful design: Aimed at reducing feelings of intimidation often associated with career exploration.
- Simplified presentation of details: When an occupation card is clicked, it expands to present key details from O*NET in a format that is more intuitive and easier to navigate than the O*NET website.
- Corresponding TikToks: We include day-in-the-life videos alongside recommended occupations so that students can easily access firsthand perspectives as well.
5. Creating Opportunities for Reflection
Our next step was to add more opportunities for reflection. After all, research shows that self-reflection is crucial for developing career identity.
Self-Reflection is Important For...
Choosing a Career You Love
Reflecting on your passions, values, and interests will aid in discovering the career you want to pursue.
And Navigating the Challenges Along the Way
Understanding your needs and frustrations will help you seek out the appropriate resources for help.
Helping Students Reflect on Their Career Identity Status
Throughout our research, we commonly referenced the Meeus-Crocetti Model, which outlines five career identity statuses, each characterized by distinct needs, motivations, and behaviors.
I implemented a questionnaire based on the Meeus-Crocetti Model to help identify each student's identity status. Upon logging into ExploreCareers for the first time, students complete the questionnaire and are prompted to reflect on whether they resonate with their assigned status. This not only allows us to provide relevant guidance, but also helps students gain introspection into their career journeys.
"I like it. I've never really thought about this being like different stages in figuring out what job I want. So, I think this really helps me think through it."
"I feel like it's pretty accurate. I think it's really helpful because they're really detailed. It wasn't just 'oh, I know what I'm gonna go into' and 'I don't know yet.'"
Helping Students Reflect on Career Anxiety
Additionally, we hoped to design distinct sets of reflection activities that are tailored for each career identity status. However, due to time constraints and limited capacity, we decided to prioritize creating activities that are beneficial for students across multiple identity statuses.
I took the lead in creating our career anxiety activity, understanding that career anxiety can impact students at any stage of their career journey. I curated a set of resources that together address various manifestations of career anxiety, but found that they only offered generic advice. To make them more relevant and meaningful, I created reflection questions to prompt students to think about their own experiences and how the advice could apply to their specific situations. About half the students found the activity helpful, while others did not feel like it resonated with them, which we'll have to explore further in our next iteration!
"I think it definitely helped me get it all out. And like kind of reflect on it. And like think more deeply into it and understand my feelings more."
"The imposter syndrome [article] was interesting, but I've never really felt it or had any experiences with it, so it's more interesting to look at it with a third-person perspective on it, like outside on it."
6. What Key Lessons Did I Learn?
My time at Tech4Good has been incredibly enriching, and I'd like to share some of the most significant lessons I've taken away from the experience!
Perfection is Not Always the Answer
As a perfectionist, the thought of an “imperfect design” used to frustrate me. I had spent countless hours trying to make things pixel perfect before learning how to prioritize design tasks and and focus on what matters more. While I still occasionally struggle with perfectionist tendencies, I've become more aware of when they arise and know how to manage them effectively.
Design is a Continuous Process
While designers are often taught a simplified, linear design process, it is important to remember that in reality, it is not so simple. What works for one project might not work for others. In designing ExploreCareers and BridgeUs, we continuously circled back to research and ideation — it wasn’t a “one and done” deal.
Healthy Team Dynamics Boost Engagement
As a lead, I was responsible for facilitating discussions and keeping the team engaged. This was sometimes challenging, especially during remote work sessions. I found that incorporating bonding activities helped build stronger relationships within the team. Trust among teammates plays a significant role in fostering openness and encouraging members to share their thoughts and be vulnerable.
Remember to Update Design Systems
It can feel easy to ignore an outdated design system, but the design debt quickly racks up. This was especially apparent when we were personalizing the ExploreCareers prototypes to each student. As a result, I've learned that it is important to conduct regular audits of the design system to ensure it is up to date.