Project Objective 🌟
Students often face an overwhelming amount of career information but lack personalized guidance, especially with the national ratio of 1 counselor for every 376 students. This leaves many students unprepared to make informed college or career decisions.
Students want to make informed college and career decisions, but it is hard because:
They are flooded with career information without personalized guidance to make sense of it
Limited access to counselors leaves little time for individualized career planning
Existing exploration activities often lack clear connections to real-world opportunities or actionable next steps.
The Problem😅
Quest Treks needed a scalable way to provide personalized career guidance that goes beyond static information, helping students connect their interests to real-world opportunities and take concrete actions toward their goals despite limited counselor availability.
To address the needs of stakeholders, we created a flexible web platform that pairs immersive career simulations with AI-powered reflection tools. This approach helps students explore careers, reflect on their fit, and receive tailored action plans.
Functional Requirements
The final design consists of 5 key components:
**Welcome screen** providing context about the current state of the web app
**Role types carousel** allowing users to explore a set of predefined role types and enter career simulations affiliated with each role type
**Immersive simulation** allowing users to see first-hand what careers pertaining to their chosen role type are like in a gamified format. Aimed at helping them gain an understanding of whether a certain career is a good fit for them
**Dashboard** displaying role types and simulations the user has explored, and their potential next steps
**Nova (AI counselor)** interacting with users to assist them in gaining career insights from their simulations
User Testing and Validation
Cambiar had 10 students provide feedback three times in July and early August on DGF’s designs. We also had feedback from the client and the team mentor.
Major insights and improvements
Cluttered and text-heavy dashboard layout. Based on mentor feedback, there was an overwhelming amount of text, a lack of visuals, and a “boxy” layout on the dashboard. This made the page feel cluttered and reduced the prominence of insights, which the client intended to be the most important element.
Use of red and green to indicate “good” or “bad.” Green and red are typically associated with “good” and “bad,” which could bias users toward selecting green to achieve a “good” score, even when that wasn’t the intent.
Dashboard lacked an immersive, game-like experience
Participants felt the interface didn’t capture the excitement or realism they expected. Several wanted it to resemble a video game or a real car dashboard, with dynamic visuals, interactive components, and motion to make the experience feel more engaging and authentic.
Information Architecture
Design System and Components
