Designing an app to help teens find their best career tracks
Intro
Topteen is a career guidance app concept that helps teens find the right career tracks for them. It also helps them find the right colleges and courses to pursue their career.
I worked as a product designer alongside a team of engineers on this project. I was involved in the entire design process from research to prototyping.
The project is currently in development and will be launched later fully later this year. In beta, around 3000 students have signed up for the app or shown interest.
Client
Period
July, 2022 – December, 2022
Team
2 engineers
1 product manager
My Role
Product Design, Prototyping
Key Deliverables
Product screens, Interactive prototypes
3K+
total signups on the app
100+
people have successfully applied to colleges with the help of the app
Background
TopTeen is a web-based mobile application designed to assist teenagers in discovering and exploring careers that align with their interests, skills, and aspirations. The primary goal of the app is to provide personalized career recommendations and resources to help teens make informed decisions about their future.
The Problem
The current education system and societal norms in India often prioritize traditional career paths, leading to limited exposure to unconventional or emerging career options. Many teens might be unaware of exciting and rewarding career choices outside the mainstream.
Moreover, existing career exploration tools often lack age-appropriate content and user interfaces tailored specifically for teenagers. Teens require a platform that speaks their language, presents information in an engaging manner, and addresses their specific concerns and uncertainties.
Research Insights
To ensure a user-centered design we conducted extensive research to understand the target audience, teenagers (ages 13-19). User research included surveys, interviews, and user feedback from similar existing apps or platforms. Key insights include:
62%
of teens reported unconventional interests (not engineering, medicine or law) and aspirations, most reported lack guidance on career paths that suit them best.
🗺️
Many teens find it challenging to access reliable information about various careers and the skills required to pursue them.
80%
of teens reported to be heavy users of highly engaging social apps. The app must be engaging and intuitive to cater to the preferences of digitally-savvy teens.
Some memorable quotes from the interviews
Key Focus Areas
From the research insights, we identified the following key focus areas for the interface:
Playful visual appeal
Interactiveness
Engaging Content
Social Relatibility
Gamification
Solution First Design
Since this was short project, we decided to skip the wireframing stage and directly jump into designing the screens. We used the insights from the research to guide our design decisions.
💡 This process was inspired by a ConFig 2021 talk by Helena Jaramilla that we came across as a team.
The Process
The simplified we followed looked something like this:
Since I was not responsible for the branding and illustrations, jumping straight into prototyping was a good idea. It saved us time and we were able to get feedback from users faster.
The Final Prototype
For the sake of brevity, I've only included the portotypes that passed user testing. Each flow also details what it aims to solve.
Fun Onboarding
To make the long onboarding process more fun, we made it stepped and added fun features like swiping left or right to select interests.
Career Discovery
TopTeen uses an academic qualitative pyschometric quiz to figure out the best career options for the user. The quiz is designed to be fun and engaging.
Familiar Patterns
Since our target audience was mainly teens who are heavy users of social media, we decided to use familiar patterns like stories and feeds to make the app more intuitive.
Gamification Features
To retain users, we added gamification features like badges and trophies to the app. Users can also compete with their friends to earn more points.
Engaging Content
The feed is full of engaging content like quizzes, polls and articles. Users can also share their own content with the community.
Additional Tools
To provide teens with continued value, TopTeen also has an extensive set of additonal tools like a resume builder, college finder and more.
Outcomes
The web app launched in public beta in July 2022. Here are some key outcomes:
3K+
total signups on the app
100+
people have successfully applied to colleges with the help of the app
