Career Exploration
Helping job seekers discover and try new careers
TITLE Principal Designer
RESPONSIBILITIES product design, experience design, interaction design
COMPANY Transfr Inc
TEAM SIZE 3 to 4 people in the first year, about 15 people in the second year
TOP USER GOALS Have fun using the school’s VR headset to take a ~20 minute field trip to several different workplaces and try jobs that might be interesting to pursue.
TOP BUSINESS GOALS Enable young people to see themselves in well-paying jobs, and help them take the next steps toward enrolling in a training or apprenticeship program.
Product Summary
Young people who aren’t aware of all the career opportunities available to them, and don’t have enough information or experience to make informed decisions about their future.
WHO is it for?
WHAT & HOW does Career Exploration serve them?
Users explore a variety of well-paying, in-demand careers and actually perform important actions and tasks from those roles, in virtual reality. Afterward, they receive follow up information via mobile and desktop web that tells the latest local salary and job opening stats, as well as training opportunities.
Company Background
had established itself as a provider of job training simulations that teach specific skills, like how to repair truck brakes, or how to use a circular saw.
Customers were looking for a product that would let students see what it is like to be a person who has a job like plumber, or auto repair technician, or line worker. The list of potential careers goes on and on!
Macro Design Process
When I was assigned to Career Exploration, I got to work thinking about what made the most sense for our audience. I interviewed students and teachers to better understand how they plan for life after school. I wrote personas and user stories to help the team understand our students’ needs, and the context of how our product would fit in their life.
I identified the following challenges, and modified the product design to meet them.
CHALLENGE ONE – OVERCOMING STEREOTYPES AND BIAS
If the product’s goal is to get students to try jobs they might not have ever considered, it’s not good to hide them in menus with sections many people will never open. People will have bias and assume headers like Manufacturing or Automotive or Health Care are “not for them.”
SOLUTION
Arrange the VR menu of simulations so everything is on the home page, to enhance discoverability. Career Exploration’s content library is modest, so overwhelm isn’t a problem in this case. Simulations are clustered by industry for ease of browsing.
Label simulations by the task the student will do, NOT the job title. For example, drawing blood has potential to appeal to people who may have ignored “nurse.”
CHALLENGE TWO – THE USER’S TIME IN VR IS SHORT
Students are busy people. Schools have many students and only a few VR headsets.
SOLUTION
Simulations for each profession should be no longer than 5 minutes, so students have the opportunity to try several careers before their session ends.
Instead of attempting to showcase an entire day in a professional’s life as stakeholders envisioned, simulations should focus on one tight scenario that allows the student to be directly involved in a distinct action that’s cool or meaningful. There is going to be one moment in each sim that sticks out as the memorable takeaway, so I removed everything that didn’t serve that moment in order to maximize users’ time trying more careers, and also avoid boredom.
CHALLENGE THREE – GETTING USERS TO TAKE ACTION THAT WILL CHANGE THEIR LIFE’S TRAJECTORY
Stakeholders initially envisioned Career Exploration as a VR-only product. While the simulations alone might be compelling to students, we also wanted to share information about earning potential, local study or training programs, and job openings in their area. I recognized that VR isn’t the best place to present that information, from both a usability and technical feasibility standpoint.
SOLUTION
I introduced following up with students via mobile and desktop web. This suddenly allowed Career Exploration to:
Remind busy students of what they did earlier, and get them thinking about those careers again.
Present information about local opportunities and salary where and when they can take as much time as they like as well as potentially share it with parents or other trusted people who may help them make big life decisions.
Most importantly, it enabled us to provide the users with easy ways to access more information about training programs for the careers they chose.
Research
Career Exploration is very different from other products on the market, so we presented the design concept to students, teachers, and other school staff for their feedback.
50% of teachers and career counselors were concerned that because students’ time in the headset would be limited, they might waste time browsing the menu, not maximizing their time doing simulations. To address this, we added an orientation component where people would be able to preview the simulation content that would be available in the headset.
The research informed the evolution of our user journey. Now, it looked like this:
Customer / User Journey
Micro Design Process
Once the product was defined, Career Exploration needed a lot of quality simulation content, quickly! Here’s what the design process for that looked like.
1. The business team identified a career that is in-demand and pays well.
2. I studied the career on YouTube and the web, to familiarize myself with it and begin generating some ideas.
3. I interviewed a SME in that field, and asked them about:
a time they made a difference to someone while on the job
what they would show a young visitor on the job site
fun stories from work they might tell at parties
4. Once we chose a scenario, I wrote a simulation synopsis with detailed sketches of how each interaction works.
5. When the first draft was finished, I did a time estimate, and edited the sim down if it was over 5 minutes.
6. Then it was time to review with engineers, artists, SMEs, and stakeholders. If there were concerns, I got consensus on solutions and made adjustments until everyone was excited.
7. Another designer then took over and created a full design spec. Once that’s complete, development begins!
Results
Career Exploration has been well received by schools, community colleges, and businesses because it solves the common problem of “how do we let young people see themselves in well-paying jobs they hadn’t considered before?”
In just two years’ time, Career Exploration has become Transfr’s top selling product. It is helping people all over the United States connect the dots to a better future through better employment opportunities.