My team and I created a mobile app to help underprivileged young adults build skills that will prepare them for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which will be driven by advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing, and other technologies. We conducted a thorough user research analysis that guided us throughout the project to help define the scope, structure, skeleton, and visual design elements with iterations from user feedback testing.

Unprepared for the future

Fighting this skills crisis with accessible skill-building mentorships for underprivileged young adults

Our app, Adult-it, was built with the intention to fight this skills and learning crisis by connecting young adults to experienced, credible mentors volunteering to share their knowledge.

Bright, Driven, & Seeking Direction

Building an empathy map helped to anchor the focus on our key values and insights uncovered during research

Characteristics

  • Intelligent and driven graduates from high school
  • Lack basic skills and a support system to guide them
  • They feel lost, stuck, and anxious but have the motivation to succeed if they only knew where to focus their energy
  • Well versed with modern technology and use their smartphone for virtually every action taken throughout the day
  • Seek trusted and credible sources of information to show them what they don’t know
  • Can intuitively filter out fraudulent or misguided information

Our Goal — Find a solution and build a clickable mobile prototype - in 2 weeks

My Contribution

  • Organize user research with interview sessions and surveys
  • Persona creation
  • Defining information architecture
  • Wireframing
  • Hi-fidelity prototype

Constraints & Roadblocks

  • School Project
  • Working remote due to COVID-19

Week One —

Proto-persona creation prior to user research

Building proto personas to visually interpret our stakeholder assumptions

Consolidating and making sense of user research data

Five interviews and surveys were conducted to understand what type of skills were commonly lacking, what gaps needed to be filled, how they defined success, and what steps are taken to be successful..

Affinity map

The biggest insight during interviews: interviewees felt like they lacked certain workplace skills and needed someone that they trusted to teach them instead of searching online.

Prioritizing business impact and user needs

We held a brainstorming session to ideate the feature set and settled on four that had the biggest business impact/user priority.

Feature prioritization

Credibility and trust was a key focus if we wanted users to keep coming back.

Analyzing competitors

We conducted a Competitive Analysis to assess the market and figure out how to differentiate or improve upon existing features.

Competitor analysis

Creating a reason through narratives

Drafting a user journey map to illustrate and clarify the user’s motive

In the flow, the user would answer a series of assessment questions that identify their biggest need and connect them with the appropriate mentor based on the mentor’s expertise.

User flow to schedule time with a mentor

User flow to connect with a mentor

Week Two —

Sketching out the frames

We started out with wireframe sketches and iterated with several variations of lo-fi, mid-fi, and hi-fi prototypes.

Wireframe Sketches

Mid-fi prototype

Mid-fi Frames

We wanted the app to convey a balance of youthful vibrance and professionalism so the user would feel entertained but also take it seriously.

Usability testing

User Testing Matrix

Iterations made after conducting user tests included:

  • Creating a visual uniformity across the app
  • Increasing the size of buttons and fonts to make them more obvious
  • Restructuring some of the architecture to create a better flow for the user during the skill assessment

Hi-fi frames

Some of our highlighted hi-fidelity frames after user feedback

Presenting to the class

Presenting our final case study presentation via Zoom to the class

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