Avenues: Connecting Students to Career Exploration

Summary: Discover how thoughtful UX design transformed career exploration for young adults. This case study showcases the development of Avenues, a mobile application bridging the gap between students and professional mentors through job shadowing opportunities.

An entrepreneur identified a gap in the job site and job-seeking markets. While platforms exist for seeking internships and jobs (like Handshake and Indeed), there was no product specifically designed to help young adults connect with professionals for job shadowing opportunities. The solution was a mobile application dedicated to connecting young adults with community professionals to aid in finding job shadow opportunities, enabling users to explore career paths through hands-on experience.

Conducted comparative analysis of leading job search platforms (LinkedIn, Handshake, Indeed)

Executed focus groups with high school students to understand job shadowing needs

Performed user surveys to validate feature priorities and application flow

Achieved valuable insights through card sorting and standardization grid analysis

User-Centric Feature Development

Identified search functionality as the highest-ranked feature through user research

Developed streamlined onboarding and profile creation processes

Implemented personalized job shadow recommendations based on user preferences

Created efficient communication channels between students and professionals

Data-Driven Information Architecture

Utilized hybrid card sorting to optimize content organization

Structured information hierarchy based on user mental models

Achieved clear content categorization through user testing

Implemented intuitive navigation patterns validated by research

Conclusion: The project successfully demonstrated the value of thorough user research in developing a novel solution for job shadowing connections. Through iterative design and testing, we created an intuitive mobile application that serves both students and professionals effectively.

Key learnings emphasized the importance of early user validation, the need for clear information architecture in educational tools, and the value of focused features for specific user needs. The foundation has been established for future enhancements, including expanded networking features and virtual shadowing opportunities, showing commitment to evolving career exploration tools for young adults. F

Case Study: https://casestudy.fwddesign.co/avenues