Ezpath
Axure | Adobe CC
An app that helps high-school students choose their post-secondary education path. A four months long project that won second place in an IBM competition in December 2019
Problem Space
Helping students choose their post-secondary education.
Goal
To build a mentor-system without biases, that helps people choose their best post secondary option by taking in their interests, their future goals and recommending the most suitable program with those considerations
Process
Target Users
Anyone considering entering post secondary education from high school students to mature students. Following are the 4 archetypes the program will cater towards.
Key Insights
I started off with reading research papers from peer reviewed HCI journals, followed by conducting questionnaire surveys and unstructured interviews. The following key insights were gained.
Key Insights from Questionnaires
Key Quotes from Unstructured Interviews
Possible Solution
It seemed like if the interviewees had the ability to talk to someone who went through or was going through the program they were interested in, they might have been able to make a better, well-informed decision.​
The following is the first iteration of a hierarchical task analysis.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Assuming that most people using this app have access to a smart phone, two iterations of low-fi prototypes were made using simple tools such as paper and pen. The second iteration was improved with feedback from user testing.
User Testing
Round 1
The first set of sketches was a high level brainstorm of the most basic features of the app. Thus in this first round of user testing it was found that a lot of the navigation between the screens was not resolved. To overcome this, a second iteration was done adding back buttons, and a menu to ease navigation.
Round 2
Another round of user testing showed the following unresolved issues
Prototype
A video that shows the journey of a person using this app
Attribution
This project was a four person group project, so at every step of the way, each person would complete every task on their own and then it was all compiled at the end. However, some of the things were completely done by me which include the following:
Both iterations of sketches
Archetypes
Information Architecture
Future Considerations
While this project focused on the user research and designing to solve a problem, it lacks good UI design. It would be nice to see it's potential when more time is put into designing its user interface.