Project 2

FOCUS
USER-CENTERED DESIGN PROCESS
TIMELINE
JUNE 2020 - SEPTEMBER 2021
Project Buds Hackathon Duration 2 months
ROLE
UX Designer
TEAM
Cristie Huang
Joyce He
Natasha Hsu
Sharif Abbasi

PROJECT BRIEF
Cumulus is a web application aimed to create a space for underrepresented minorities where they can collaboratively explore different tech roles with a community, mentorship opportunities, and learning modules.

PROBLEM

When our team launched a survey to assess the nature of career development for in high schools, our data showed that common challenges high school students faced were:
1. High school counselors are not always helpful and some schools do not have career counselors.
2. Students experience information overload from the plethora of resources online.
3. Students don’t see the applications of the content they learn in school and how this can be translated to real world work.

SOLUTION

Our team designed a web application where users can access modules to learn about different roles that exist in the tech industry. This web application is designed so that students have a space to explore, seek mentorship, and community.

OUR PROCESS

01 Research
| Surveys

02 Ideation
| Design Charrette
| Sketching
| Low Fidelity Prototype

03 Prototyping
| High Fidelity
| Next Steps

RESEARCH

During three weeks in the initial stages of the project. We conducted user research with underrepresented high schoolers across different areas in the US. We reached out to previous high school teachers, counselors, and personal networks to broadcast our survey to get a gauge on how high schoolers feel about college education and potential career paths in the future. About 65 students participated in this survey. The pain points we acknowledged from the data were: