Problem Summary

Currently, the internship search process is one of the most frustrating, isolating, and confusing aspects of many students' college careers. As our internship application season drew to a close, my team and I tangibly felt the onset of stress and desperation regarding an internship within ourselves and peers. In response, we asked ourselves this question: How might we alleviate feelings of stress and anxiety related to the internship search process among University of Washington students? 

Context

Intro to User Centered Design (HCDE 318)*

Role

UX Research, UI Design, Usability Testing

Duration

Winter Semester 2022 (10 weeks)

Team

Christina Kuo

Isha Narayanan

Dawit Borrows

Final Design

Our project culminated in a functional interactive prototype. Our mobile application integrates social support and practical time-saving features to directly address user pain points. The final result is a mobile application.

Expand for a better view of the prototype!

User research summary

As a first step in understanding our target users, we conducted three semi-structured user interviews with University of Washington students. We asked questions pertaining to different steps in the internship application process to understand user pain points through the entire journey. Furthermore, we wanted to gauge what was missing or unintuitive about existing platforms in the same space. During the time of these interviews, all our interviewees had not secured an internship.  

Key Research Findings

After conducting our research, we collaboratively synthesized our research into an affinity map. Through this process we identified four main user frustrations.

1) Lack of guidance during the internship application process, specifically regarding industry-specific application timelines and application material feedback

2) Feelings of inadequacy and peer-induced stress

3) Frustration with tracking internship application statuses

4) Lack of clarity, specifically regarding salary and requirement information, in internship job descriptions

“It's like stressful not knowing what you're going to this summer when some people have known for months.” – Sophomore in Computer Engineering

“I want to find a more organized way of describing the role because sometimes the description is really long on the handshake.” – Junior in Public Health

“I didn't realize you're supposed to start this early I thought it would be like a January type of thing not an August or October, you know.” – Sophomore in Computer Engineering

“I don't think that I've come across anywhere where it has been clear the status of the application. So, it's impossible for me to keep track of all the applications that I've submitted” – Junior in Informatics

“Industry connections are also important, I recently got through the society of women engineers. Before that I had a hard time developing my resume and cover letter…..I also didn’t know the importance of tailoring my resume to fit a job description.” – Sophomore in Computer Engineering

User Personas

Next, we translated our user needs into two personas. Sophia represents the archetype of an individual who is just starting to learn more about the internship process. Jerald is a more experienced induvial, who is looking to get industry feedback on his application materials. Through completing these personas, we were better able to understand what functionality each archetype required in an internship search mobile application. 

User Journey Map

Next, we chose to draft a User Journey Map based off our persona, Sophia Johnson. This map helped us identify high points of stress to combat in our design. 

Design Requirements

Based on our user research insights, we formulated the design requirements for our application. In addition to features that arose from these design goals, we incorporated features common to existing competitor applications that users liked (ex. filtered search and job saving) in our final design.

Information architecture

Before moving to our prototyping phase, we created an information architecture to create a structure for our wireframes.

Lo-Fidelity Prototypes

For the first iteration of our wireframes, we created basic wireframes to address all our user needs. Some key flows included searching for and viewing a job description, viewing internship application statuses within the application, searching and scheduling an appointment with an industry mentor, and messaging a peer.

Expand for a better view of the prototype!