Student career assistance

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The Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) contracted the Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC) IT Team to design and develop a responsive web tool aimed at helping high school students make more informed choices regarding college selection and overall career path. The contract was resigned and was valid until May of 2021.

Kickoff-to-Release Time: 6 months (Initial Contract)

‍Stakeholders: IDES, Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE), Illinois Community College Board (ICCB), Illinois Office of the Governor

‍Team: Developer, Data Scientist, User Experience Architect (My mentor and myself), UI Designer (me) Project Manager (from the Governor’s Office) and ISAC IT Team Manager

‍My Role: UX research, UX design, wire-framing, prototyping, visual design, development oversight

‍Digital Tools: Sketch, Figma, Zeplin, InVision, Marvel

‍Final Deliverable: Live Responsive Website

The state was facing ongoing losses of potential sources of revenue and productivity due to students seeking college outside Illinois and then not returning for employment.  

Help prevent students leaving Illinois to go to schools out of state by providing a free resource containing information about education and career decisions they can make after high school. The tool will show the benefits of Illinois colleges, pricing and jobs from various areas of study.

By offering unprecedented access to Illinois job data (e.g. wages, stability, earnings growth) directly correlated to individual areas of study at Illinois-based colleges, students will have an easier time deciding on a path towards a specific career in the state. 

High school students preparing to apply for college were envisioned as the target audience. To a lesser extent, their parents, counselors as well adults seeking to return to or start college studies were also considered.

Rationale: Understand student’s college search process.

‍Interviewees: 30 students, juniors and seniors, 3 high schools.

‍Methodology: Observe with minimal prompting.

‍Key Findings: 

• Many students were overly reliant on parents and friends 
• Students started researching too late
• Undecided students focused on costs over career info
• Students preferred interesting career paths over money

Rationale: Mapping allowed us to evaluate the “as is” process and identify problems, gaps and potential opportunities.

‍Source Material: Interviews and personas

Key Findings: 

• Involve the user early in the process to bolster independence
• Presenting too much data leads to confusion

Considering research findings, the customer agreed that determining a college “best match” and affordability would be emphasized over helping the user decide on a career path.

The ISAC team and stakeholders white boarded concepts, compiled use cases and quickly tested ideas against personas.

Based on the outcomes of brainstorming and subsequent collaborative sessions, we developed a notional site map and primary use case flow.

Created in Figma, simple grayscale renderings represented our first layout of how main screens would be visually represented on mobile. These soon evolved into higher level mockups, with various graphic elements replaced in accordance to usability findings.

After refining prompts, affordances and general look-and-feel, we used Figma to link screens together and provide minimal interactive capabilities for testing users. 

Rationale: Confirm that users would be able to perform tasks as expected using the design interface we’d designed.

‍Interviewees: 20 students, 5 School employees, 3 parents

‍Methodology: Moderated, open-ended and directed tasks.

‍Key Findings: 

• Site easily navigable, consumable and usable by most
• The sankey diagram we were using was viewed as "overwhelming" to many users
• Users requested data for more specific careers.

Rationale: Use this card sorting method to find clusters of commonality to help categorize issues.

Source Material: Direct quotes from user interviews.

Key Findings:

• Users were having a difficult time using the current "Sort & Filter" functionality
• The table view was preferred to the sankey diagram
• It was difficult to see if changes were being applied
• The start button was not being seen easily

Following a soft launch, the team invited students and administrators from several high schools to try our beta tool and provide feedback. We followed up with a number of users via email and remote interviews, discovering minor usability issues with initial setup, data presentation graphics, table customization and the sankey diagram.

Integrating all feedback and findings from studies and analytics, we modified the site’s UI to address the most consistent issues. After several additional changes that focused on a colorblind-friendly palette for the results gauges as well as optimizing the way users sorted and filtered the data, we obtained the stakeholders approval for the next release.