Curatace Alumni Platform Research
Description
Curatace is an alumni engagement platform that connects job ‘seekers’ (students) with information ‘givers’ (alumni/community experts) to help seekers successfully build their careers. They were our project sponsor and we were in contact with the founders throughout the semester to provide updates and gain feedback. This was a group project that focused on User Research and Analysis. The problem that we found from our research was that seekers were not able to find relevant guidance and were not confident enough to begin their professional journey. To solve this problem, our solution was creating user groups based on industry/interest as a primary place for guidance. By being a part of these groups, seekers can access relevant information and get actionable feedback quickly and easily.
Methodology
We started our research by interviewing participants about their thoughts related to mentoring and alumni engagement. Simultaneously, we conducted research about existing platforms that can be seen as competitors to Curatace and understood their offerings. Once we had this initial information about the product and users, we created empathy and stakeholder maps to understand user thoughts and feelings, and to visualize how different stakeholders affect each other. A second round of interview was conducted to get more information about the user and their current career-building journey. Using this information, we created a retrospective journey map to better understand the current user journey and to identify opportunities where Curatace can make the biggest difference. We also used this information to develop a problem statement and brainstormed feature offerings that could be combined to create a product that is actually effective and in-line with user behaviors and expectations. Once we had a concrete idea about the solution, a prospective journey map was created to demonstrate how our solution takes advantage of the opportunities from the current user journey and improves it. We then conducted a third round of interview to get feedback on our solution as well as our feature set. To refine the solution even more, we looked at our design artifacts and identified assumptions that we had made. A fourth round of interview was conducted to gain information about, and address the assumptions. The images below are some of the final design artifacts that we created during our research and analysis.
Research and Solution
Through our research, we found out many commonalities that helped us make a persona – Sasha. Sasha is a Gen Z person, about to graduate, and is looking for a job. She is tech-savvy and prefers digital communication over traditional methods. She is ambitious and wants to build a successful career for herself. Through our findings, we found that the best way to describe Sasha is that she is a stressed seeker. The most important reason for this is that she feels helpless and lost, and doesn’t have a clear idea about what she should be doing. She has tried to look for information online as well from others, but it didn’t help her much. One of her biggest pains is not being able to talk to people who have been in the same situation as her not too long ago. To help Sasha, our solution is focused on making relevant and useful information available to her early on in her career and throughout her journey so that she has guidance available at all stages. To do this, we leverage industry/interest groups that users (both seekers and givers) can join, where she can access features like discussion boards, industry checklists, mentor suggestions, job postings, alumni directory, etc. Detailed insights and higher resolution images can be found in the report linked below. (Click on images below to open them in a lightbox)
Results
To summarize our findings, some key takeaways are - 1. Considering everyone as a seeker and a giver. We found that everyone is a seeker and a giver at different stages. A senior year student might be a job seeker, but at the same time provide guidance to someone in their freshman year. We recommend not differentiating between such profiles in the solution and giving each member equal access; 2. Realizing that the process is constantly changing. As the competition is increasing, the job search process is also changing. And so even though it would be extremely valuable to take advice from an industry expert who has been in the field for 10-15 years, someone who has recently gone through the process might be able to provide more relevant guidance; 3. Offering personalized recommendations to every member through features like mentor suggestions or curated resources; 4. Facilitating communication between different members in a private as well as public chat setting; 5. Engaging users early on and providing continuous guidance throughout their job search process; 6. Promoting long-term connections and support even after getting a job. (Click on images below to open them in a lightbox)
Next Steps
The next step for this research would be to gain more information about seekers’ preference for discussion boards vs mentors. In our interviews, there was some conflicting information about preference for discussion boards and preference for mentors. The reasoning for preference of one over the other would be key in finding a conclusive answer, based on which the solution can be modified. Another thing would be figuring out how to keep users on the platform instead of them connecting with each other via some other platform. For e.g. after matching with a mentor, seekers might want to connect with them via LinkedIn or Email and continue the conversation there. Keeping them on the platform would be important for the platform’s growth.