Career Compass

CareerCompass is a mobile app that helps students and young professionals find and apply for jobs, supporting them through the whole search: networking, interviewing and building a resume.

It was my first design challenge, built over October and November 2023 with a team of three. I worked as a UX designer (digital wireframes, low- and high-fidelity prototypes) and UX researcher (user interviews, competitive analysis and usability tests).

Our priority was empowering students in their professional journey. That meant designing for several kinds of users with different needs.

With industry-leading job search apps already out there, the real question was which problems they leave unsolved, or don't solve well.

CareerCompass brings the tools job seekers juggle into one app, to take some of the workload and stress out of applying.

Resume builder

Build your resume right inside the app.

AI interview prep

Practice with prompts tailored to the role and interview type.

Calendar

Balance applications and interviews with everything else on your plate.

Communities

Network through groups in your field.

Media

Trending news in your industry, to keep your skills current.

Research started with the job search apps already on the market. For each one we compared branding, design, strengths and weaknesses, to understand which features were essential and where a new app could stand out.

Next, we interviewed at least three students across undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate levels to uncover their pain points and needs.

Combined with the three personas we were given at the start, those findings shaped our own persona, a user journey and an affinity diagram.

With the core features defined, we sketched low-fidelity wireframes of the key screens, focused on how easily users could move around the app and get to what they needed.

We then turned the sketches into digital wireframes, adding the screens we hadn't sketched at first.

Once the prototype worked end to end, we ran a usability study focused on how easily people moved through the app and how quickly they found what they were looking for.

Getting around turned out to be harder than intended, so navigation went through at least two more iterations.

High-fidelity screens began as the final low-fidelity round wrapped up. We referenced competitors' layouts, then gave the UI distinctive foreground and background elements to keep it simple and inviting.

User feedback led us to rework the home screen and add a new AI interview prep screen. We closed the challenge by presenting the concept and our process to judges from Intuit and an audience, then reflected on their feedback for future work.

Working with a team of three outside the classroom was new for me. I came away with a much deeper grasp of the research that comes before sketching: affinity mapping, user interviews and competitive analysis.

Taking the work from rough sketches to high-fidelity screens over several iterations gave me a real appreciation for how much each stage of design asks of you.