About Project
Modern students, enthusiasts, and job seekers face a fragmented journey when determining their educational and professional development routes. The absence of an integrated platform that seamlessly combines scholarly and university study, relevant coursework advice, career counseling, and job seeking aspects in a user-friendly online and mobile application often results in confusion, inefficiency, and often, missed opportunities.
Role
Contracted Product Designer, Implementation Lead
Duration
11 months
Establishing a platform for future-generation UPSKILLING Experiences
Project Scope
After careful studying the research reports from end clients, the user research and market research was targeting to gain insights into user behaviors, requirements, and motivations using methods such as observation, task analysis etc. The conclusion was the result of qualitative and quantitative analysis research methods, gathering good no. of responses and conducted interviews with 10+ participants for each feature list
Target Audience: Students, professionals, and career switchers across various age groups (16-45 years old).
Platforms: iOS and Android
Project Scope
380 Days
Timeline
20+
Competitive Analysis
350+
Components
180+
Screens
Project Goals
To create a comprehensive, user-friendly mobile application that serves as a one-stop solution for individuals of all age groups seeking educational opportunities, career counseling, latest updates from private or governments and job search options.
Course Navigation
School & college Updates
Track Gov. Exams
Quizzes and Assessments
Job Search
Career Experts
Forum and Discussion
Video Content
E-book and Podcast library
Timeline
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Design Thinking Process
The entire design process took a lot of time where the list of features was endless and the competitors were already performing well. The design process involved user research, ideation, prototyping, testing, and iteration to create a smooth and user-friendly interface, that matches the mental model of every targeted age group.
Design
Sketch
Hi-fidelity Design
Empathize
User Research
Interview Questions
Pain-point finding
Ideate
Brainstroming
User Flow
Information Architecture
Define
User Stories
Competitive Analysis
User Testing
Usability testing
Advance prototyping
User Research
To ensure that the Skillup app effectively meets the needs of its diverse user base, the user research approach combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The key objectives are to understand user pain points, validate the app's features, and tailor the app to different age groups and career stages.
Research Goals:
Understand how users search for schools, courses, and jobs.
Identify challenges in upskilling and career counseling processes.
Validate demand for features like personalized recommendations and integrated job search.
This research ensures that Skillup’s features address real user problems and provide a seamless experience across education, upskilling, and career search stages.
Interview Questions
How often do you seek educational content, such as exam details, courses, or assessments, online?
What types of educational content are most important to you when using an educational app? (Exam Details, Courses, Quizzes, Assessments, Podcasts, Videos, Blogs, Jobs, Admission Details, Government Exam Details, Ebooks)
When searching for exam details or course information, what factors influence your decision to choose one source over another?
How often do you participate in online quizzes or assessments as part of your learning experience?
What challenges or frustrations have you encountered when trying to find educational content online?
20+ more
Problem Finding
We miss out the gov. exam dates if its related to some organization.
task is time consuming where the content is available in text format not in video format
Tons of educational apps available in market that makes confused which one to refer to purchase course
It takes lots of time to research and it requires switching multiple apps to find content that is relevent.
It becomes time-consuming when there is no sufficient informations about government exams and finding previous exam papers becomes very huge task.
30+ more...
Solution they were looking for
A platform that can sagrigate all the information on one platfrom from where user can do all research without leaving app
Learners ought to be capable of finishing quizzes and evaluations promptly prior to their ultimate exam, aided by professional analyses
User should be able to get guidance regarding his career at any stage
User should be able to do research of all available courses from same topic without leaving app
User should be able to find college and schools without missing admission date
30+ more...
User Stories
After discussion with end clients, many user stories we were able to capture describing user’s goal, need or desired outcome, providing insight into their motivations and driving the design process in a user-centered manner.
Competitor Analysis
Grasping user perspectives and their precious experiences with current applications piqued our curiosity to examine the strong points and weak spots of prevalent competitors. We compiled a roster of all the competitors considering the features that the client aims to focus on.
After conducting the user research, it was clear that all the above platforms were not able to provide everything what user is expecting from a single platform and as a result user end up with tons of informations with distracting contents and less satisfaction.
Ideate
The main idea was to get all the content data from third party platform and curate them on this new platform that reduce the overall hustles. Curating all the modules and content type and achieve consistency through out the app was very challenging in the beginning of this brainstorming stage. There were varieties of contents and multiple platforms that were needed to cover to get all the data from third party platform and position them in specific content category.
After several attempts and multiple client meetings, the final version of information architecture took almost 2+ months where initial idea was to reduce no of clicks and make interface user friendly that can be used by age group from 6yrs to 45yrs.
Information Architecture
Sketching & Wireframing
Base Colors
#7764DB
#F48B1B
#FFFFFF
#E8E8E8
#121212
After doing super 8, visiting competitors site and multiple platform where variety of layouts were available it was very exciting task to come up with the balance that support the brand colors and maintain the interaction without any friction.
Home Page
Courses
Discussion Forum
Quiz & Assessment
Explore Page
The explore page was one of the most important page where user is able to see his pre-selected category, able to switch category and sub-category, able to explore any type of content. After trying out multiple sketches and wireframes the final version took almost 2-3 weeks.
Category + Sub-category Selection
The purpose of this section was to let the user choose or change the category or sub category.
Courses
This section will allow user to choose courses that is coming from different platforms.
Live Stream
This section will allow user to watch live streams that are related to courses, exams, admission, job or other news that are related to career.
Videos
This section will allow user to watch pre recorded video by career experts or instructors that are related to courses, exams, admission, job or other news that are related to career.
Short Videos
This section will allow user to watch small forms of video by career experts or instructors that are related to famous topics, courses, exams, admission, job or other news that are related to career.
Quiz and Assessments
This section will allow user to practice for upcoming exams under the observation of instructors to check the preparation before exam.
News & Articles
This section will update user that are related to famous topics, courses, exams, admission, job or other news that are related to career.
Exams
This section will update user about exams that are coming by providing material details, sources, previous exam papers, coaching classes and many other information that are related to exams
Podcasts
This section will update user about exams using audios that will cover material details, sources, previous exam papers, coaching classes and many other information that are related to exams.
Ebooks
This section will help user to find exam related material that will cover material details, sources, previous exam papers, coaching classes and many other information that are related to exams.
And Many more
User Testing
The Initial ideation was just the beginning of this project. at every stage of the project, it was easy to refer to the competitor's app and adopt the user flow of their existing app version. The main challenge was to gather all the user flows and weave everything in one single app that offers a seamless experience to any age group of users.
From the previous projects, it was clear that to test this app I could not rely on the client or the internal developer team to test the behavior and performance of the user journey as they already know how designs and applications work.
Onboarding flow
After first prototype, the journey from splash screen to home was very confusing as well as time consuming. The end client wanted to make sure that from onboarding to home screen it only takes less than a min. The idea itself made me to revisit the user flow and all the content types. The initial user flow was looking something like this
After several attempts and multiple iteration the finalized version selected by the client was not only time saving but it was also easy to interact from the targeted age group which was a huge success. The finalized iteration was very intuitive and the user was able to navigate the whole process without any friction as each screen were very easy to recognize.
(Using Google, Facebook, LinkedIn or Email)
Splash Screen
Onboarding
Login/ Sign up
Home
Category Selection
The whole application was founded on the management of different content types (such as posts, blogs, audio, podcasts, short films, live streams, and so on) and the categorisation of this content based on various age demographics. The reverse card sorting and re-iteration of information architecture helped to shape the entire Explore page and the bottom navigation of mobile application.
The usability testing also helped to understand the importance of icons that impacted on user's behaviour while interaction with the specific category.
For the User testing there were multiple types of participants were targeted where there were moderated and unmoderated remote testings were done for multiple performance testing for each categories of content. The user profiles helped to find 12 potential participents for the performance and ideation tests and understand varieties of experience of users.
Conclusion
The entire application process was very overwhelming and confusing at first but the detailed research and attitude of justifying each section of the app became the main reason of completion of this giant impossible project.
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