Viaduct: A career fair management system.
A desktop and mobile platform designed specifically to connect students and employers prior to the career fair.
THE PROJECT
Viaduct is a product on which I worked for almost two years during my master's with Dr.Ben, who expertise in Data transformation and intelligent learning systems from Indiana University. I worked with him to build this product, connecting students and employers prior to the career fair.
THE USERS
University Students and Employers attending the career fair
MY ROLE
Understanding user requirements, Define various concepts through iterative brainstorming sessions, Apply Qualitative and Quantitative Research methods
TEAM
Niranjan Kshirsagar
DURATION
Aug 2017- May 2019
PRESENTATION
EXPLORING THE PROBLEM SPACE
It is essential to introduce the importance of career to students at University at an early stage. During the primary research, I identified that there isn't any system which connects students and employer prior to the career fair at the local level.
THE CHALLENGE
For Students:
-
Unrealistic expectations
-
Don’t take advantage of the offer
-
Anxiety about not being able to find a job
-
Staying organized
-
Dealing with recruiters
-
Personal branding
For Recruiters:
-
Building Employer Brand
-
Lack of qualified candidates
-
Targeting passive candidates
-
Integrating multiple recruiting solutions
-
Difficulty keeping staff skills and knowledge up-to-date
-
Lack of support from your team
KEY OBJECTIVES
Create a platform where every student can use this system as a platform to make an economic impact
Students can create their personal brand and present themselves through things like a resume, video, portfolio, etc. to employer
Employers and Students can develop the long-lasting professional relationship
Create awareness in college students about a career at an early stage
THE PROCESS
.png)
RELATED APPLICATIONS
-
For professional networking
-
Most of the company's revenue came from selling access to information about its members to recruiters and sales professionals
-
Two-factor authorization for security
-
Designed to connect local professional for people seeking their help
-
One can cut down search time by using Bark
Bark
-
Jobcase has access to a wealth of data about open roles and the companies that are currently hiring for roles that you might be interested in.
-
With Jobcase, you can set up a profile and get access to a huge database of jobs. In addition, you can join groups, or peruse the community to participate in discussions.
-
Jobcase boasts over 80 million users, so there are plenty of discussions to join in on!
Jobcase
-
Allow you to join the people of like-minded professional
-
Stay on top of the latest news in your profession, relevant news about conferences and tradeshows
-
Professional matchmaking
-
Users can be notified of relevant employment opportunities
Opportunity
-
A valuable tool to identify local professionals with similar interests
-
With Lunchmeet, you can set up your availability for an impromptu meeting and find other local professionals with availability during those time slots
-
What makes Lunchmeet unique is that you use it to identify one other local professional to meet for coffee or lunch, as opposed to pulling in a crowd
Lauchmeet
FIELD RESEARCH
Direct Observation:
-
Event observation - Career fair
-
Interaction with Students and Employers
-
Understanding the needs of students and employers
Informal Interview:
-
The passive observation was followed up by an informal interview with the user to understand their experience throughout the career fair
-
Questions were derived from notes taken during the event and general experience
Reasons student attend career fair:
-
Practice interviewing in low stake environment
-
Explore career options
-
Networking with industry people
-
To gain confidence
-
Learn how to present your professional skills
-
Learn what to do and what not do
Reasons students don't attend career fair:
-
Companies not sponsoring international students
-
Lack of preparation for resume and elevator speech
-
Not enough confidence to go and talk to employers
-
Companies and domain are different
LITERATURE REVIEW
Key Insights
Few Examples
USER PERSONAS
Employer
Goals:
-
Building Employer Brand
-
Targeting passive candidates
-
Integrating multiple recruiting solutions
Frustrations:
-
Lack of qualified candidates
-
Difficulty keeping staff skills and knowledge up-to-date
-
Lack of support from your team
Student
Goals:
-
Practice interviewing in low stake environment
-
Explore career options
-
Networking with industry people
-
Gain confidence
Frustrations:
-
How to present your professional skills
-
Ways to present other extracurricular skills
CONCEPT DESIGN
Design Concept One: AR
Gamification using AR to compete as teams at the stadium during the breaks
AR replay/highlights where the user can pause the replay and manipulate the content in 3D.
AR in-stadium navigation
Geolocation beacons to push contextual content to the user
Key Elements
This solution addresses multiple user needs and satisfies goals defined during research. The augmented reality game is aimed at controlling the use of mobile phones by gamifying the break duration using an AR game to compete with opposite team fans in the stadium. This promotes user engagement during downtimes while building brand loyalty through rewards from sponsors. This benefits both the user and the sponsor.
Ideation Selection Process
During the design ideation phase of this project, new ideas were continuously generated, explored by the team and iterated upon. Naturally, there were many features that morphed into new concepts or merged with existing concepts.
The Live-Action Fan Design (Design Concept 3) was selected because it offered the most flexibility to integrate the best design elements from the other concepts.
TASK FLOW
LOW FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
.png)
USER TESTING OF LOW FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
We conduct User Testing with a total of 07 users
03
Passive Sports Fan
04
Active Sports Fan
The key insights were:
Next Design Iteration
After consideration of the User Feedbacks, a rapid new prototype was developed to address these issues (Direct Court Selection, Instant Rewards, Simplifies game, Choose by player or whole team). The significant changes made were also deemed necessary based on specific requirements from the product owner for the ability of sponsors to be able to engage with the fans.
HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
After fixing the issues suggested by our users during pilot testing helped me develop the high-fidelity prototype. The concept of our high-fidelity prototype was inspired by the idea of roulette.
USER TESTING AND RESULTS
TASK ONE: SIGN INTO APPLICATION
“Assume that you have just downloaded the application and want to start using it. You could create a new account but please use john as user name and iupui as password”
Sign in was conducted with high easability and did not have troubles. Concerns that were drawn from this task seemed to focus on the ability to work through the screen to type in individual names when they were reminded to use the provided username and password.
-
Future direction may need to focus on the ability to type in individual user names, and then move to the hotspot for an easier testing experience.
TASK TWO: EXPERIENCE THE HOMEPAGE AND SELECT BASKETBALL GAME TO PLAY ROULETTE
“Congratulations you have reached the main home screen of the Sports Roulette application. This is where you can check your account profile, read the latest news and select a game to play. Please take some time to explore what is available on the screen” (Provide enough time to users to explore the application)
“Now select the Warriors vs Pacers game and proceed to play the Sports Roulette mobile game”
-
The latest news was not directed to the user’s preference, which allows for the future design to provide a preference option in the user profile before reaching the home screen.
-
Through the guidance of the user tasks, the user was able to complete the task in the given time, with a positive response demonstrating the ease of use to reach the basketball game followed by the sponsor's page.
TASK THREE: ENGAGE IN BASKETBALL GAME AND USE THE PROTOTYPE TO PLACE A BET
Step 1: “The game is already underway so please review all the sponsors available and use the prototype to select Adidas as the company that will provide clothing as prize options if you become eligible for prizes.”
Step 2: “Although the game has already started there is currently a time out on the court. Review the players then select player #2 from the Pacers, and select player #23 from the Warriors to place a wager on.
Step 3: “Choose player #2 from the Pacers, and player #23 from the Warriors and observe changes as you click through players available.”
Step 4: “There are the 30s left in the timeout so now select 600 of the Adidas tokens and lock in your bet for each player places them on the court where you think those players will shoot from next.”
The user tends to swipe through the players rather than using the arrow provided to reach the next player for selection. This can be improved through redesign of a swipe through function or potentially the use of voice integration (for the user’s that know the player they want to play immediately.
TASK FOUR: COLLECT YOUR PRIZE AND SHARE YOUR RESULTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
“The game resumes and you watch with your friends as the predictions you made are accurate. Collect your winnings from the game that just finished, and please share your results with friends on social media.”
-
The user wanted to know which prizes would be available, which was not presented in the prototype due to the inability to connect with the sponsor.
-
The user enjoys the fact that they have the ability to rejoin the game and continue playing, to gather up more points for future prize collection.
-
The user had expressed that they would like to see the value of points collected on the collection prize screen, to determine if it was worthy to cash in.
-
All users enjoyed the ability to share their results on social, as social media was one aspect that they did not know was existent.
-
This demonstrates the need to show social earlier in the prototype.
-
COMMENTS
-What user’s liked:
-
Ability to “guess” where the next shot may come from
-
Potential ability to play in real-time
-
Learning about players by playing the game
-
Viewing their news feed in the home page
-What user’s felt needed improvement:
-
Data visualization of shot history
-
Understanding the different shot zones
-
More player history and background data on the team’s current status
Changes proposed for the next design iteration include:
● Integrate point history into the user profile screen.
● Develop a user-friendly chip-placement that considers accessibility issues.
● Improve the visibility of the shot clock and time left to place a bet.
POSTER DESIGN
LEARNINGS
