Affinity Diagrams
Once the focus group was completed, all the data was collected and placed in Miro and separated across different post-it notes. These post-it notes were then used to categorize the data into common themes. Common themes that emerged from the data were that users felt that they had little to no help from friends, had a tendency to work prior to the main position, created their resumes before graduation and felt that it was their main issue before applying, were very anxious about interviews, and thought that being involved was key to success. Based on these themes and walking the data we identified 5 key user needs that need to be addressed:

Some missed questions that should have been asked upon reflection on the data were about whether or not they went into their first interview with confidence in their resume but started to lose this confidence as the interview went on. Had we had this information, we would have been able to have a better understanding of what users felt about their resumes as they went through their entire journey, not just at the beginning or at the end. After walking through the data, the following design opportunities were identified:

1. Have a profile creation option and make it similar to social media so that people can discover each other with the same aim and share their experiences in group chats or blogs.
2. We may offer a free ATS passing test so that users can see what keywords are being taken from their resume by the algorithm and alter it themselves to meet the desired role.
3. Create group hackathons to bring together diverse sorts of developers (front-end, back-end, designers, etc.) so that they may collaborate on projects and add them to their resumes as experience.
4. Add blogs where individuals may share their insider knowledge on how to 'crack' the interview.
5. Add everyday technical problems that they can solve and set a goal of the number of those problems solved for each week.
6. Add a post-account creation survey that serves the purpose of finding the user’s most important weakness and display them a list of helpful articles on that matter.
7. Create a notification system that collects the most relevant and helpful articles as well as finds the most similar people and sends users the list of those articles and people they might be interested in connecting with.

User Personas
Using the discovered user needs we created three different personas. Our primary personas are John and Kyla. John is a junior in college who is looking for an internship over the summer but doesn’t have any prior experience or big projects in his portfolio. Kyla is a senior in college who is about to graduate and is looking for an entry-level position for post-graduation. She has minimal experience thanks to her schoolwork and past interviews but feels she has no practical experience. Together, John and Kyla embody most of the key user needs that we discovered through our research for our main users: practicing for technical interviews, finding a community for support and advice, and resume development tips.

During our focus group, it felt like the people who had already gotten jobs or who were employed had advice to offer as they explained their journeys to this point. Those without jobs also wished they had someone on the inside to give them advice and guidance. That is why we came up with our secondary user group: people who are employed. This group is represented by our persona Poppy, a software developer. He is already employed and has knowledge that he wants to share with others. His specific user need is to be able to connect with other users, specifically our main user group, to be able to impart knowledge from his experiences.

Scenarios and Storyboards
After creating our personas, the next step was to create different scenarios featuring these personas to get a better understanding of how our users will be interacting with the app. These scenarios were then illustrated through storyboards. This way we can visually see the potential interactions our user will have with the app as they prepare themselves to either apply to different job opportunities or help others with this task. Here are the scenarios and storyboards for each persona.

John’s Scenario and Storyboard:
John is trying to find a summer internship so he can gain more experience to add to his resume, but the amount of things he needs to learn and prepare is overwhelming. This makes John nervous, but thanks to “Pathways” he now has a guide for what to do. The first thing John needs to do in order to start his job search is to learn about the different interview questions that might come up. Since John is a Computer Science student, he will be facing both technical and behavioral questions during the interview. With “Pathways”, John now has access to sample questions to help prepare him for the different interview questions so he won’t get stuck with his answers. Next, John needs to learn more about the jobs out there and the industry, so he can determine what is the best fit for him. “Pathways” will also allow John to connect with others that are using the app as well. He can either connect with people who have more experience than him and gain advice about different jobs in the industry and the job hunting process, or he can connect with others who are also in his position so he doesn’t feel like he is alone in this. With all this support and encouragement, John starts to feel more confident in his prospects to acquire a summer internship so he can continue to learn and grow for his future career.

Kyla’s Scenario and Storyboard:
Kyla is about to graduate from her senior year, and she is currently looking for a job post-graduation. While looking through different positions, Kyla realizes that she doesn’t have too much experience to succeed, but thanks to the different opportunities “Pathways” offer, she doesn’t need to worry anymore. Kyla’s first concern was that all of her experience thus far has only been related to school - she didn’t have any personal projects that she could put on her resume. But thanks to the different hackathons that were hosted on “Pathways” she was able to gain practical experience, both in her field of interest as well as in team collaboration, so she could improve her resume. Kyla was also a little nervous about how to handle interview questions regarding her field of interest. While she was interested in the field, she didn’t know too much about the industry and what should be expected to know. Luckily, she was able to read all about the industry and interview tips from different blogs by different “Pathways” users who work and have real experiences in the industry. Thanks to “Pathways”, Kyla was able to improve her resume and her interview skills so she was able to present the best version of herself to her favorite employer, and now has the opportunity to work for them.

Poppy’s Scenario and Storyboard:
Poppy is a software developer who has been in his position for the last 2-3 years. He knows a couple of upcoming college graduates and juniors who are trying to secure jobs or internships. He has been hearing that many of them are struggling due to a lack of connections and experience. Poppy has sympathy for them as he was once in their shoes and wants to help them in any way he can. With the help of “Pathways”, Poppy is able to do just that. As he learned throughout his career, collaboration skills are key to success in the industry. To help others experience this, Poppy sets up different hackathons on the “Pathways” app to allow others to participate and work with each other. Not only is Poppy allowing them to gain collaborative skills through this, but students can add these hackathons to their experience. Next, Poppy is interested in giving advice directly to the students, especially those who are looking to get into software development. He knows that having connections is key for the business, and he wants to be one for others. With “Pathways” Poppy is able to connect directly to students, and he can chat with them to learn more about them so he can properly mentor them. Lastly, Poppy understands that choosing a job can be overwhelming for many reasons, so he decides to create a blog on the app so others can read it and learn from his experiences. He hopes that this can ease the students' tension. Even though no one is forcing Poppy to do all of this, he is more than happy to be the support for others that he wished he had in the past, and he is even happier that “Pathways” can support him with this!

Intro to Design Solution
The next step after walking the data is creating a prototype of our solution. This includes creating a task flow diagram, an initial set of wireframes from this task flow diagram and then performing basic user testing to continue to improve and iterate through the designs. This section will discuss the initial set of wireframes, and how we iterated to our second set after the mid-point class critique.

Second Iteration of Wireframes
During the mid-point critique, the main pieces of feedback we received were the following:

1. Including a way to update whether the user is still unemployed or not. This was not thought of during the initial design.
2. Implementing more screens. Some buttons led to features that weren’t implemented yet, and users wanted to see how those would look.
3. Many users commented on how the app was intuitive to use thanks to the size of the text, labeling of buttons, and use of color.

In order to address the first two pieces of feedback, we decided to implement extra screens. Specifically for the first feedback, we included a screen for the profile page of the user. Here, the user will have the option to edit their profile once they successfully obtain a job (if they choose to now help others). Right now since we don’t suspect our users needing to edit their profiles so soon, we have those screens as a work in progress. To address the second piece of feedback we got from the class, we took a look at the buttons that class members clicked while exploring the prototype that wasn’t already implemented. These buttons were meant to lead to either registration screens for hackathons, or blog posts. We created these extra screens and linked them to the buttons in the prototype. A link to view the final interactive prototype can be found here, and a link to view the annotated version of the prototype, indicating what changed, can be found here.

Intro to User Testing
User testing is the next step in our design process. This is important as we can uncover any potential errors that may still be present in the prototype. The method of testing we used was the Think-Aloud Protocol. In this method, we had our testers complete a series of tasks that we set up for them, and asked them to think aloud as they went through the prototype. While they were talking and completing the tasks, we took notes and listened to what they had to say. The following section explains in detail how we conducted and evaluated our Think Aloud Testing.

Think Aloud Testing
We had our users complete three tasks: Log in as someone looking to be employed, Do some activities to prepare for an interview, and Send a message to someone. The second task contained 3 subtasks: Practice an interview question, Read a blog, and Join a Hackathon. The following is how each task was deemed completed:

We tested the prototype with 2 users. While both users completed the tasks, we asked them to talk out loud. As they were talking, we took notes about what they thought each part of the screen was and any part where they showed signs of difficulty, if any. Some basic statistics of the user testing include: out of the 5 total tasks both users were able to successfully complete all 5. One user completed all 5 with no issues, but the other slightly struggled with the “Join a Hackathon” task. They did not quickly realize one of the buttons was indeed a button, instead, they believed it was an ad. But, they eventually discovered it on their own without input from the designer so it was still deemed a success. A more thorough examination of the data is included in the Appendix. Overall, these results indicate that our prototype is intuitive to use for the most part. After the testing was over, we had a discussion with each of the users about their experience with the prototype. Their feedback, as well as some notes for improvement that were taken during the testing, is as follows:

1. The user is not able to customize the profile. Including the option would help the user feel more personal with the app.
2. Some pages did not allow for an easy way to go to a previous screen. While it isn’t too much of a hindrance, it would become frustrating to start a task over.
3. There were no distinguishable differences between the text on the screens. This made everything a little too uniform. Changing this would help items stand out more.
4. The ordering of some of the content did not make sense. For example, it’s faster to access the blogs before the authors.
5. The “News” title was misleading. The user thought there would be news articles, but instead, it was a summary of the other tabs. Changing this in future iterations would help lessen confusion.