School to Work Transition Prototype Testing & Observations

Course: Design Thinking Action Lab, Stanford

Submited by: Sivaprasad.P

Date: August 19th, 2013

PROBLEM STATEMENT - Revisited

“ Creative, articulate, confident, a little regretful, young media entrepreneur who found out what he really wants to become in career at a very young age needs a way at school so that he needs to study only those areas that would come in useful in his career because he has not figured it out why he needs to study certain courses like chemistry and languages other than English like Malayalam at school which have no use later in his career. ”

Prototypes

Solution 1: Inter company career change

Intend of this idea is to encourage companies to allow staff to explore other lines of activities within the same organisation.

This will help each individual to overcome the boredom of working in the same line for many years & to realize his/her latent skill sets and potentials

Prototype for solution 1: Inter company career changeThis interface as part of a company’s website is intended to allow employees to apply to move to other lines of activities in the same organization by selecting from among the recommended areas/departments

An employee cannot apply for any line of activity. He can only select from among the departments system recommends based on employee’s skill sets and new training he acquired.

Employee should give sufficient justification why he is opting for a career change within the organization

Employee’s request will be processed only if certain conditions are met which is given upfront in grey box.

Solution 2: Students create courses

Intend of this idea is to encourage students to find out what their interests are and choose courses as per their interests and still work out towards graduation

This factors in the scope for not licking certain by the students so that he /she can stop taking them and start taking the courses and trainings that interests them most

This will help them identify the career path of their choice and prepare for it better through customizing courses that they study to get their graduation.

Prototype for solution 2: Students create courses

This interface as part of a grad school website lets students to choose from the available list of courses even at the stage of applying for a graduate school admission.

Students will have to use the shuttle control to select and add courses and subjects to his selected pool of courses that he can study along with the mandatory courses of his major.

There should be a maximum of courses that a student can study independent to his major

Student request will be accepted provided he meets certain conditions related to qualifications and experience and faculty approvals etc.

Prototype Testing Process

Test participants & processes

Stakeholders :

• Mr.Manoj Varghese Mathew, 24, Male, Young media entrepreneur

• Mr. Binu Jose, 29, Male, UI Designer, over the mail

• Once shared followed by a walk through of the prototypes over skype to each of them.

Process:

• Prototypes were shared over email to the stakeholders

• Stakeholders were given a walk through of the prototypes over skype

• Their feedbacks captured. Concerns raised by the stakeholders are listed in the following slides.

• Also mentioned towards the end, follow up considerations based on the concerns shared by the

stakeholders.

Stakeholders’ speak

• “Good ! At least in prototype we have some option for the students to select whatever he wants to study” (Manoj)

• “…no way, how can we restrict a student what he wants to study ? If he wants to study something not available in

his college ?....or…if he finds the course tough, will this system let students to choose another course or fail ?”

(Manoj)

• “ok..also I love computers and programming, but my background is in business. Some maths I learned was back

in school. Now can I study IT even If I don’t have solid maths background ?” (Manoj)

• He also wants an option by which a student should be able to study a course irrespective of his qualifications. For

example, a student of literature should be able to do a course in calculus provided he/she can prove her interest

and capabilities. (Manoj)

• “I love to be UI front end programmer. I have no opening in my office here. I cant leave Kerala (his present

location) as well” (Binu Jose)

• “Ok, If I join the team, will I be able to perform in the new team ? If I don’t, what will happen to me ? Will UI team

take me back ? I am not very sure” (Binu Jose)

Stakeholder feedbacks

• Manoj appeared satisfied with solution of selecting the courses based on interest.

• He is concerned about the situation where the student is interested in a course which is not

available in a college he is getting admitted to.

• He wants option to change the course during the course also if he finds the course not suitable or

extremely tough

• He also wants an option by which a student should be able to study a course irrespective of his

qualifications. For example, a student of literature should be able to do a course in calculus

provided he/she can prove her interest and capabilities.

Stakeholder feedbacks

• I evaluated the prototype 2 with Mr. Binu Jose, 29, UI designer with 10 + years of experience to

get his feedback. He is currently working in Kerala, India.

• He sounded comfortable and welcomed the idea

• He is concerned about the situation whereby the location & departments do not go hand in hand.

For example, if Binu wants to move to Database Management team and the only opening

available is in a US office ?

• He also wants an option by which he should be able to move back to the previous team if he

does not find the new role interesting.

Reflections & Further considerations…

• Regarding prototype 1, there should be a possibility to allow students to opt for courses not

available in colleges he is applying for. This will further the flexibility available for students to

persue what they like most

• To allow students to change course during the course years. This will mean additional work for

the student to make up the lost time. How should we include that into the process ?

• Option for students to take up any course irrespective of the qualifications. This means a

measure, against which a students eligibility to attend a course, needs to be created. This will

also mean students are likely to jump inconsistently between the courses and then end up failing

to complete graduation. So there should be a process to evaluate situations like these.

Reflections & Further considerations…

• Regarding prototype 2, the stakeholder requires an option to move between countries as such to

join a different team. This will mean an employee coming under multi-country policies operational

in an organisation and its intricacies and the cost factors like salary calculation etc. So another

restrictive mobility seems to be the only way out.

• Will the option to allow employees to return to the previous department if he does not find the

new role unattractive, be always feasible ? What happens if the opening is filled by the previous

department ? Should the department force open a slot to accommodate him/her?

• Will this not lead to an erratic movement of employees between the department if they find any

activities boring or tough ? The feasible solution seems to be putting a restriction related to the

number of times an employee can shift between departments in a specified period of time ?

However, will this solve the problem of force creation of slot for a returning employee ?

Observations & Learnings

• There is great difference between a designers thinking and the mental models of the users. The

challenge would be to bridge the gap as intuitively as possible so that users get to interact with

interfaces/prototypes that satisfy their mental models. In short a designer is not creating a solution

for himself but for the user.

• Testing revealed more ideas than the previous stages of interviews done to create empathy map.

• Testing of the prototypes revealed serious inadequacies of the first prototypes like how to address

the problem of frequent employee shifting back and forth between departments leading to fall in

employee productivity. This scenario has forced me to think in lines of bringing restrictions to the

number of times an employee can shift between departments.

• Designing solutions is a iterative & collaborative process. Effective solutions to problems can be

arrived only through iterative rounds of prototyping, testing, feedback gathering loop.

• Requirements of users can be never ending. So the better approach to solving a problem would be

to understand why the problem is there in the first place and then build on it and not finding

problems on the periphery.

Thank you

Email: sivaprasad2020 at gmail dot com

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