Cal Poly Career Services
Career Services at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, provides students with access to resources and guidance for exploring and identifying careers, majors, concentrations, and more. Supporting students in making informed decisions about their professional paths, offering tools and information for job searches, career planning, internships, and networking opportunities. Platform connects students with potential employers and industry partners, facilitating their journey toward successful and fulfilling careers.
Design Career Services, an essential student resource, to significantly enhance student engagement and interaction with the platform and service.
Career Services Team
Client
Cal Poly Services
Project Managers
Reva Moolky, Sameeha Siraj
UX Designers
Sri Bala, Kaia Kim, Nidhi Sathish, Maxine Ancheta, Sophia Levin
2024
Role UX Researcher, UX Designer
Skills UX Research, Visual Design, Design Systems, Prototyping, User Testing
Tools Figma, Figma Jam, Coda, Medium
My Role?
UX Researcher, UX Designer + Visual Design, Design Systems, Prototyping, User Testing
Designed and prototyped pages for companies (ex. Google) — About, Majors, Roles, Salary, Industry, and Location.
Problem Statement
How might I create an interactive website that aids Cal Poly student users in making informed decisions about their major and career paths, utilizing graduate data?
Students often face uncertainty and lack of clarity when exploring career options and understanding industry trends. Despite having access to general career resources, students struggle to find specific, relevant, and actionable insights tailored to their individual academic backgrounds and career aspirations. This is particularly challenging for students who are unsure about the skills needed for certain roles, average salaries in their field, or the best strategies for entering specific industries or companies.
The project aims to address these challenges by developing a user-friendly app that utilizes extensive graduate data analytics. This app will provide students with interactive visualizations and personalized career insights, such as average salaries for different majors and concentrations, top industries and professions pursued by alumni, and strategies used by previous graduates to secure jobs. The app will also offer valuable information on the skills required for various roles, the time commitment and difficulty of entering specific markets, and realistic salary expectations.
Client Standups
During our initial meetings, the client emphasized the importance of:
• Website is interactive
• Utilizing collected graduate data provided by the client
• Feature to aid students in deciding a major — including a filter to view a major that aligns with the student’s interest
• Feature to aid students in deciding a concentration
• Feature that allows students to see who are the top employers from Cal Poly. Additionally, the top roles and jobs.
• Includes description of the roles and jobs. Include the top 10 companies (sourced by graduate data).
Who is this helping?
By targeting incoming students, current students, and prospective employees, the app seeks to become a vital resource for career exploration and planning. It will empower users with the knowledge and guidance needed to make informed career decisions, based on real data from the university’s graduates. The focus will be on simplicity, relevance, and practical applicability, making the app an essential tool for students navigating their career paths.
Timeline
Week 1 — User research
Week 2 — Ideation
Week 3 — Ideation + testing, design mid-fidelity screens
Week 4 — Prototyping + testing, finalize design
Research
Before diving into the prototype design, we conducted user research to better understand the needs and frustrations of our target audience. After sending out a 10 question survey to students, each team member interviewed 2-3 different people to gather insights on their experiences with Cal Poly Career Services and choosing their major and career path.
What we did
Sent out a 10 question survey to 49 students — at the end of the survey, students were allowed to add additional comments (no one was required to add comments, but was provided for students who wanted to express concerns with Career Services).
How did this help
Our team wanted to collect more user research additional to the data the client provided
Highlighted what current students wanted to be featured in the Career Services website
Allowed us to check-in with students — would they want access to the grads’ data?
Provided us with qualitative and quantitative data and insights — surveyed current students in a variety of majors
Survey Results
Student rankings for the order of importance of the following factors when exploring potential career paths:
1 being the most important and 6 being the least important
1. Role
2. Salary
3. Location
4. Company
5. Skill requirements
6. Remote/hybrid
Powered by Google Forms
User Interviews
Conducted user interviews to understand the needs and expectations of potential users. Created user personas to better understand our audience interests and needs. Asked users about their personal experiences with career planning.
User Insights
Our research phase yielded several critical insights that directly shaped the design and direction of Career Services.
Key takeaways included:
Top Factors in Deciding Career Path and Role
Salary → Personal interest/passion → What they found enjoyable → Location → Company culture/values
Issues with Graduation Status Report
Users reported that the GSR is overwhelming and “too wordy”, believed it could be streamlined better. Students also felt as if the GSR felt very disconnected and confusing for users to understand, for example, there was no reference to what the presented numbers in the data meant. Additionally, many users were unaware that the GSR existed and that Cal Poly students had access to this report.
Addressing Feature Preferences
Users preferred clear, clean, and minimalist design choices. Had a desire for access to a streamlined flow that was company based, showcasing popular roles within companies for Cal Poly alumni. Users wanted simple and clear statistics and graphics that weren’t overwhelming.
Ideation and Design System
Revamping the design system for a modern, cleaner, and advanced look.
Color Palette Client requested the color palette be similar to the current Cal Poly design system, consisting of green and gold themes.
Logo No design for logo, must be Cal Poly and Career Services logo.
Typography Simple typeface, similar to Cal Poly’s Source Sans Pro.
Interactive Elements Implemented rounded buttons to complement the friendly and welcoming atmosphere of the website. Created interactive graphics, charts, and statistic reports to allow users to be more engaged with the website.
Ideation
Designed low-fidelity wireframes to layout our initial ideas
Implementation
Implemented our design system and components
Refinement & Prototyping
Refining designs, components, buttons, and features to ensure consistency throughout screens.
Preparing screens for prototyping stage.
Final Designs
* Users can search through roles, majors, locations, and companies
* Users can view different majors and concentrations — corresponding collected graduate data will appear, and interactive!
* Users can see corresponding industries, career roles, locations, salaries, and employment stats
* Users can go directly to locations, roles, and industries from the navigation or search bar
* Users can view companies and access detailed information and data, such as for Google
Challenges & Lessons
One of the main challenges we faced in this project was balancing our vision for the app with the client's preferences. Our team initially wanted to incorporate a variety of fun and gamified elements to make the app engaging and appealing to students. However, our client emphasized the importance of maintaining a professional look and feel, which they believed would better align with the serious nature of career planning and appeal to a broader range of users. This required us to carefully integrate interactive and engaging features while ensuring the overall design remained polished and professional.
What’s Next
Cal Poly Services intends to further develop this project and adapt the mobile version to align with our designs. The client remains in communication with our project managers, actively discussing the next steps for this development.
We're excited about the future of Career Services and the impact it will have on Cal Poly students in making informed decisions about their career path. Thank you for joining us on this journey.
Cal Poly Iter8 | Cal Poly Career Services Team | Spring 2024
Links
Figma - Prototype
*Stay tuned for Career Services’ case study
Thanks for checking out Career Services!
Please get in contact if you have any questions or would like to learn more about this project!