Observe
Test Your Future
A career insight network which allows students to build a clearer picture of their future by enabling companies to be direct educators and advisors… relieving time and money waste from students switching majors due to career indecision.
With Observe, companies and professionals document their work; doubling as training resources for aspiring students who need a clearer vision of how, what, and why… when it comes to working. Imagine LinkedIn… except a social network of professionals who share their knowledge and insights with visual short form content similar to Tik Tok.
We are crowdsourcing professional perspectives to create a centralized source of insight for students to access job lifestyles. We also see a high interest and potential for student’s to share their learning journey which will allow Observe to develop into a learning hub.
Think Quora meets LinkedIn and TikTok.
There is opportunity :
To create a platform for students to interact with their teachers (company education, universities, mentors)
To catalyze more learning regarding unique software, systems, and processes that companies utilize; that schools do not offer teaching for
For schools, universities, and other educational institutions to partner with companies to provide an early start to an individual’s career development
And lastly, an opportunity for employee training documentation which will ease the onboarding process by providing a learning environment between student and company (learn directly from who you will work for)
With high interest to steer and inspire the workforce to work on the world’s biggest problems by identifying purpose through transparency
To open up education for countries with less accessible education. With Observe, we can open up quality education that of which the learner can select for themselves. How many times have you had a class where the instructor was unrelatable to you? Or a time where the instructor didn’t speak as clearly as you hoped due to a language difference?
Vision Statement
We have found, alarmingly often, that students will enroll into a university program unaware of what opportunities their degree enables. Career industries are vast. There’s so many options to specialize in.
Observe solves this by facilitating insight and opportunities for students.
Observe enables students to experience a day-in-the-life of a professional.
Since students will have a broader knowledge of what they can do with their degree, they will choose their degrees more intentionally with Observe’s crowdsourced career insight. A better job fit can lead to a happier and more fulfilled life. There exists a direct correlation between overall happiness and your work. The happier you are at work, the happier you are in life because work is a major pillar of life.
To help build clear pictures for students. To relieve time, money, anxiety, depression & career uncertainty. To empower individuals with tools to test their future. We are motivated because we see how behind education is.
Observe’s goal is to move people from online interactions to offline by creating a system of apprenticeship and experience building through physical observation. However, for the time being, our digital approach creates accessibility for a mass scale to learn from watching.
Our application lets users gain insight into specific jobs, companies, and industries. Our users will have their questions answered, and our content creators should have the tools they need to answer questions and create educational content.
To allowing learning and training aka mentorship from world leaders and great role models focused on impact that the world needs... not what we want.
We aim to implement ObserVR in the future for metaverse learning.
My Role
Product Designer
Business Development
User Experience Researcher
The Process
Create and design multiple variations including mobile designs
Use Photoshop & Figma to communicate any changes in design
Iterate design based on feedback and create final deliverables
Examine array of solutions and analyzing improvement opportunities
Freshman year… all my friends were switching majors left and right. So I started asking ‘why?’
“E. St. John, who received his M.S. and Ph.D from Harvard, said, “There is, perhaps, no college decision that is more thought-provoking, gut wrenching and rest-of-your-life oriented — or disoriented — than the choice of a major””
Then, I did some research…
I quickly realized… it’s not about getting students to graduate, but more so helping students align with their mission, values, and ‘right’ job post-college.
I share this because studies show they are graduating, but are doing one of the following . . .
Students who are unsure of their career path experience high levels of depression and anxiety pursuing the wrong careers. They are lost in this world.
Graduates are not using their degrees and then there are graduates who are leaving their jobs shortly after being hired; thus resulting in a labor shortage amongst blue and white collar jobs. There are not enough skilled workers.
Students are choosing majors based on outdated values from their parents, salary, and prestige. They are experiencing pressure and they do not realize what’s imperative to career fulfillment.
Students are less likely to seek higher education after high school.
Brilliant students are redirecting their career dreams due to hopelessness triggered from not getting accepted by a school institution which is inaccessibility to learning due to a barrier to entry.
Several times have I been engaged in conversations with smart individuals whom of which changed their entire career route simply because they weren’t accepted into a school due to the school’s expected requirements.
This can be found in the Spiderman Movie where a set of highly qualified engineering students lose faith due to not being accepted to MIT. Hear some of the student interviews yourself.
Additional secondary research on the problem
There exists a lack of insight preparation for incoming college students to choose their careers. Students are graduating from college, but still facing career indecision. Degrees are acquired, but their post-college careers hits a wall.
An examination of a ‘student’s why’ shows that students are choosing their majors based on biased influences, prestige, and salary… compared to a more mission-oriented or value focused criteria.
Billions of dollars in student loan debt… crippling our future workforce.
Nearly 45% of millennials have student-loan debt, reported Business Insider's Tanza Loudenback.
More than half of indebted millennial respondents in an INSIDER and Morning Consult survey said attending college wasn't worth the student loans.
Student-loan debt has reached record levels because of the cost of college, which has more than doubled since the 1980s. As of 2019, student-loan debt reached a national total of $1.5 trillion, according to Student Loan Hero. Millennials in the graduating class of 2018 have an average student-loan debt of $29,800.
A chain effect --- career indecision leads to a weaker workforce; professionals want to switch their careers; less motivation and people dread going to work
Anxiety and depression peak in college
"65% of recruiters cite a lack of skilled candidates in the market as the largest obstacle to hiring" - Jobvite/devskiller.com
"75% of hiring and talent managers use either applicant tracking or recruiting software to improve their hiring process" - devskiller.com
I also came across this book that validated many of my hypotheses and reassured me that I was headed in the right direction. I paired ‘Educational Psychology’ books alongside ‘Opening Up Education’ to fully immerse myself in the world of education and technology. Additionally, I became active in mentorship programs like Goodie Nation’s Intentionally Good Program which paired professionals with students to provide immediate relief through insight and the answering of questions. The difference between a physical solution and Observe’s tech enabled solution is the ‘scalability’ & ‘accessibility'.
Additional resources and references,
High Tech for Higher Ed: An Australian engineering professor revamps student learning with Teams
WIRED | They Rage-Quit the School System—and They're Not Going Back
DreamWakers - Validated that there is a opportunity and interest to pair students with professionals that they aspire to be
SteppingBlocks - A data-driven approach to career development; a great solution, just not very fun from a user feedback survey; more so puts the control and direction in the hands of the advisors and parents compared to the individual themselves making decisions from intuition and self.
Summary
Good to examine all of their teacher beliefs | Resource provided by a California school teacher who focuses on virtual classroom assistance and development with students. Have been questioning her for a while as she is a newer school teacher and I've been questioning her pros and cons of teaching from a digital classroom as well as the problems and plus sides of teaching in general.
Observe Team Research | Individuals Hit Hardest by Career Indecision & Education System
Andrew Chen the Growth Hacker shared a great point on the successful Sillicon Valley start-ups here
Got an idea; went to a hackathon.
Won 1st place at KnightHacks! 😄
Observe, a social growth & awareness mobile application, for people to experience a day-in-the-life of a massive variety of job professionals aiming to relieve the issue of "What do I want to be when I grow up" and for the grown to share their craft, enabling the next generation of students to build a clearer picture of their future career... sooner than later.
The first version!
To be honest, a lot of the research was done after the first version was created.
The idea came first at KnightHacks where I thought of the concept for Observe by pinpointing my peers shared life problem… which was ‘career indecision.’ It triggered me to mentally examine the process I went through to decide my own major which was Computer Science at the time. So, I had an epiphany and pitched ‘a career sharing social network’ to my team members where professionals ‘show a day in the life’ of their jobs. We stayed up for the next 48 hours at our first hackathon ever and ended up being selected for ‘1st Place - Best Overall Project’ by the Director of Google CardBoard whom of which had chosen the theme of the hackathon as ‘Education.’
The additional two resources that I clearly remember influencing my mindset at the time were :
Devin Supertramp’s - The Social Revolution
The idea that we are going through a digital age of sharing our personalities at scale. Fast forward to 2021, many of us know it as the ‘metaverse’ which is essentially life taking place virtually.
Life In A Day - YouTube Documentary
I was so intrigued by this documentary that I’ve watched it about 5 times now. The idea that people from all over the world could share their perspective was absolutely mesmerizing. It opened up an array of other possibilities. For instance, the scientific method proves there still exists a degree of uncertainty and doubt in any theorem. Richard Feynman shares this sentiment incredibly well. Within an experiment, there are zero to an infinite amount of variables that must be taken into account and the more experiments that occur with the same variables… allows higher certainty. Well, I applied that understanding to the sharing of career perspectives. With Observe, there can be a centralized source of career insight. A go-to platform for career information which is uniquely displayed compared to Google’s search display.
Competitive Analysis paired with Customer Discovery
How are students currently figuring out what they want to do in life… specifically when it comes to their careers?
What other competitors exists?
The current go to solutions and methods of career discovery for students.
Similar applications / solutions that have been introduced to me or I have come across.
Top or close competitors
General or broader competitors occupying the same space or industry.
Above is the list of products (not limited to) that I did a competitive analysis and general design audit on. I studied what worked and what didn’t work.
Additionally, the reasons why I chose the selected apps were because they fit into one of the following categories :
Social Network
Recruitment & Careers
Content Creation
Questions, Surveys, & Polls (Curiosity)
Live Streaming & Influencer Discussions
Education
Other + solutions students shared they used to find career insight.
What I learned
From the students, I learned…
Students are not confident in the current solutions as they are tedious, scattered, and can contain biases.
Students currently explore Google, YouTube, Career Counselors, and their Parental Influences when deciding their major.
Students are losing faith in universities.
Students are not prepared enough to make confident career decisions (choosing a major) when going into college.
Students lack career insight regarding the career that sounds interesting to them.
From the recruiters, I learned…
Professionals are not practicing the skills they claim on their resume… effectively.
Professionals do not match their resumes.
The hiring process is highly costly and time consuming for them and potential candidates are not reliable.
From companies, I learned…
Companies are having a difficult time recruiting and retaining talent.
Companies find recruitment to be very costly.
Companies are willing to share their professionals to provide insight if it will bring more top talent individuals.
I did an in-depth examination on the closer competitors.
LinkedIn
A shared sentiment amongst individuals is that ‘LinkedIn’s main feed seems like a career achievement board.’
Instagram Survey - Polled 50 people
Based on feedback regarding their user experience, there is room for improvement and LinkedIn isn’t designed with professional career sharing. During customer interviews, participants shared that they saw LinkedIn more for general networking, job searching, and ‘just something I feel like everyone does to make it official that we are professionals.’
Participants also shared that they used LinkedIn because ‘other people told me to create my profile.’ I further asked why they created profiles and it validated my initial hypothesis which was ‘to create a digital resume'.
Snapchat
Professionals are already taking to Snapchat to share their career perspective and to build audience bases; however, through customer interviews… they shared “it’s not easy finding people on Snapchat because accounts are on an ‘add me’ basis.”
Additionally, Snapchat wasn’t designed for career insight, but for entertainment and sending impermanent content amongst friends. Snapchat is actually where I started following professionals like Justin Kan (Co-founder of Twitch) and investors like Mark Suster, Gary Vee, and Tai Lopez for their insights. Additionally, my friend shared with me several plastic surgeons that they followed because they were an aspiring surgeon at the time. However, their accounts weren’t public and to find user’s accounts… we had to do some ‘Googling.’
Instagram
Professionals are also taking to Instagram to share their perspectives. Instagram also implemented ‘Questions’, ‘Polls’, and other forms of ‘Q&A’ for users to ask each other questions which validated my question features for Observe which I conceptualized before IG ended up implementing them a year after. This isn’t to say that I was the originator of ‘question features’, but to assure myself that I was on the right track. Once again though, Instagram wasn’t designed to be a centralized career growth network, but a place for creators to share their content and lifestyles… and previously mainly for photographers to share their photos.
Google
Google the great search engine was a common go-to tool for students to explore careers or to ask questions; however, their display and their saturation wasn’t pleasant for career exploration. The engine is immense and cluttered that can make it tedious for the non-visually oriented. I eventually imagined Observe as a visual search engine that populates career related insight by visuals. Instagram actually implemented this search engine feature with their ‘explore’ view where users can type key words into the search bar and the app will populate photos and videos for the user.
Tik Tok
Tik Tok’s style of consumption is short form videos with a system that keeps the users hooked. I predicted that people will be able to start teaching each other through short form content prior to Tik Tok’s success. Tik Tok’s concept has been implemented by other platforms like Facebook and YouTube; however, after consuming content from each platform. I noticed there is a different type of content, different audience, and different creation style. All while at the same time; most platforms share cross over content from Tik Tok. Tik Tok wins and is succeeding due to their growth hacks, but also their video creation tools and consumption style.
Quick, entertaining, and addictive. However, Tik Tok is catered around entertainment… whereas Observe has the opportunity to be focused around career insight and education.
Additionally, I utilized the app references to design the MVP features.
The Design Process
Wireframes + Mock-ups
I believe in open transparency, so here is Observe’s Product Design Notion page.
There you will find past designs and functional requirements.
Additionally, here is the Figma Playground & Observe Google Drive.
The Goal
The goal was to design a career network that is an order of magnitude better than the current existing platforms which was a standard I resonated with that was expressed by Elon Musk. He stated, a population will not switch over to a new product or service unless it was exceptionally better that of which jumping the previous curve was required. Essentially, it’s about setting the bar high and making strategic innovation a focus of design for me.
I did some research on what people liked and disliked about current social media apps. Specifically, LinkedIn.
I validated a couple of hypotheses…
Professionals are willing to share and record their work environment and professional insight.
Can find professionals already taking to Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube to share their career perspectives that are reaching millions of views.
People are interested in watching career professionals.
There is a trend on YouTube which consists of ‘a day in the life of X career professional’ that are reaching millions of views.
LinkedIn is not providing the insight that students are looking for regarding careers.
Students surveyed are sharing they look at LinkedIn once a month or less.
Students share they feel like LinkedIn’s feed is “like a career achievement board.”
Students are interested in what professionals… watch, read, and listen to. (videos, books, podcasts)
Influencers are sharing their ‘reading list’ like Bill Gates and Obama.
Recruiters are seeking a way to prove candidates can actually do what their resumes claim.
After asking Stanley Black & Decker, Coca Cola, & Technicolor recruiters. There was a common problem that is “we waste a lot of time trying to recruit candidates who claim skills on their resume that they can’t actually conduct.” Additionally, they wish their was a quicker way to weed out candidates through ‘project based recruitment.’
Core Values
When it comes to any type of system, design, product, company, or type of creation.
There exists a set of values engrained into the entity that was created.
For this particular product, Observe…
Accessibility for education and for all types of learners. There is a quote that I deeply resonate with that says “If it’s inaccessible to the poor it’s neither radical nor revolutionary.”
Memorable, Simple, and Intuitive design. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” - Leonardo Da Vinci
Innovate. The solution must be an order of magnitude better than the current solution. Jump the curve.
Remaining curious. A design catered to the curious and explorative. Exploration leads to discovery.
Scientific method of discovery. A strategic approach that test hypothesis with evidence.
Organization of knowledge. In regards to topological structure and data.
Open Transparency like Water. Unafraid of vulnerabilities. With transparency, we can come to a collective understanding with enough time and patience.
MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
I’ve designed the following screens for the Observe’s minimum viable product (MVP).
Profile View - For users to create a unique digital resume
Resource & Recommendation sharing — allowing professionals to share their consumption habits that helped them develop into the professional that they are. Input, output. We find ourselves often seeking recommendations from the people we aspire to be. We ask them what tools they use… books they read… their habits, so we can adjust ourselves to aim to become someone like them… a master of a craft.
People like Obama and Bill Gates often share their music playlist or reading list for the year. Users can stay up to date with what you are reading, listening to, and studying.
The professionals have to care and be proud of what they created. From there they will share to others who are curious and interested.
It revolves around the professionals as they are the educators, role models, mentors, and people who provide the most initial value for people who need guidance.
Without building a solid value providing environment for them to flourish, we will not acquire the initial energy to get over the first hill on the growth trajectory; the 'Profile & Company’ views are where Observe's initial momentum exists from my perspective. Additionally, company pages is what I was designing next because with large amounts of these professional's being onboarded alongside their brands... ultimately; it's a greater force of established influence and insight to provide for the students. With large corporations comes large amounts of influence. Referring to physics, equal and opposite reactions. Imagine the greater force of a larger mass.
Buckets — Allowing professionals to create step-by-steps how-tos and focused tap throughs.
This is essentially ‘deep dives’ or ‘curriculums’ which are curated focused topics that users can tap through and immerse themselves in whatever topic the creator chose to share insight on. Buckets are categorized topics with short form content by the creator for the learner to congest… quickly.
Color coordination — showing a professionals personality and interest through colors
With machine learning, overtime, we can Observe what’s peaking the users interests and what areas or industries the user is spending more time learning in so that we can provide them better curated insight or a push in the right direction. Color coordination is similar to a personality test which allows users to learn about themselves.
The Observatory Main View — For quick consumption and for general browsing of career paths and career related insight which involves a filtering system to accommodate for different types of learners.
Filtering is key - by allowing users to filter content… they can have their feed load up only text based content or even only audio based content if they are better listeners. Additionally, users can choose specific companies or professionals that they want curated content from. They also can even choose which careers to focus on. We can even filter on company values and missions.
Capture & Content Editing View
Providing users the creation tools like Snapchat and TikTok to create creative content on the platform. Being able to easily create content and post it was a major key to Tik Tok’s success because it allowed everyone to be a creator through accessible editing tools.
Exploration Orb View
The exploration orb has a view similar to the Apple Watch user interface in the sense that it orb-like. The exploration orb is a categorical topological industry map like the map of computer science. Exploring on this map allows for them to dip their feet in the water in many sub categories of an industry which gives them insight on which area best suits their interest.
Company View
A place for companies to create content, showcase their employees, work culture, work environment, and to accept questions from interested potential prospects for recruitment. The company view is like the ‘profile view’, but for companies.
Question Pool - From polling students, a high number of surveys stated that they wish they had a central location to access professionals and ask them questions. There exists many platforms like Quora, Stack overflow, Indeed, and others that allow students to ask questions; however, none of them allow video responses. Most are text based. Now imagine, acquiring video, audio, and text based answers from a multitude of professionals from different walks of life to provide students guidance on their career path and questions.
Gains + Pains
2nd version, Observe v2!
New approach & new colors.
Based on user feedback; they shared they loved the concept and approach, but they weren’t fond of the gradient sea blue in the above mock-ups. So I went back in and created a more simple and minimal design.
I shared the new designs with a population size of 20 people and they were happy with the redesign.
Observe is a platform for individuals to learn and share about today’s industries and jobs.
Humans are curious creatures, so our users are of all ages and genders. For our professionals, Observe creates a digital resume with content that employers can view; soon employers will say let me Observe you.
We are creating a mobile application with an Instagram-story/Snapchat-like interface where users can explore career and education content. Our platform is driven by curiosity — users can ask and respond to questions with posts that combine video, audio, and text elements.
Posts on Observe are topologically sorted and are accessed through the exploration orb, which displays categories—like finance, technology, or law—as nodes on a ball that you can roll around. Selecting a category will show posts from it. Spending more time in a category will show interest. Allowing us to continue pushing you in the right direction with machine learning.
Through our app, people can see how a motion-graphics artist designs a scene, how tailors fit a dress, or how software engineers write code. It's a centralized source of insight for users to build a clearer picture of their future career path by observing any job they can imagine.
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I have now been working on this project for 4 years. My efforts have been in Observe’s product design, customer research, “competitor analysis”, and the conceptual development. What I share is a surface level display showing the efforts I committed to in order to show Observe apart of my design portfolio.
If you are interested in hearing more about Observe, I would love to chat! Always open to candid feedback and things that resonate as well as things that may seem unreasonable to you.
Please reach out at lcheniv@gmail.com or if you want; I can send a carrier pigeon! 🦅
Thank you for your time!