joe.tassallo_
Project
Interview Insight
Role: User Experience Designer, Lead Researcher, UI Design
Duration: 14 days
Team: Independent
Tools: Figma
Interview Insight is designed to serve as an educational tool for those participating in journalism, yearbook, and social sciences classes. This game will simulate realistic scenarios to facilitate informational interviews techniques. Stemming from my love of research and design through participation in yearbook I wanted to create a product to help with the pitfalls I experienced as a high schooler.
The Problem
High school students lack practical experience in conducting informational interviews, essential for fields like journalism, yearbook production, and social sciences. Classroom settings often fall short in providing hands-on practice, resulting in a gap in students' interviewing and information interpretation skills.
The Goal
To bridge this gap, I aim to develop a stand-alone digital learning game that creates immersive, mock interview situations. This tool will provide students with a realistic and engaging platform to practice and hone their interviewing skills.
My aim was to identify specific pain points to guide the development of Interview Insight. I interviewed 6 students that attended a local public high school and were enrolled in social science classes, yearbook classes or newspaper/journalism clubs.
Discovery & Research
User Interviews
How might we...
give students the opportunity to build confidence in conducting interviews?
How might we...
give students the opportunity to developed specialized interviewing skills?
How might we...
provide timely feedback to students?
How might we...
provide guidance in the moment?
Taking quotes from these interviews I sorted them into the primary issues that students face. From these quotes I developed "how might we..." questions to give context to the direction of the product.
Research Findings
High school students work in larger learning environments resulting in inadequate support in conducting interviews. How might we help high school students practice low-stakes realistic scenarios that provide adequate and informational strategies to improve the quality of information received when conducting informational interviewing?
Opportunity
Identifying the Problem
Answer
Simulated Interviews: authentic step by step interview interactions.
Answer
Interactive Learning: User lead gameplay.
Answer
Immediate Feedback: Receive live hints to drive learning in the moment. Grade the final product and provide editor feedback.
Answer
Objective based learning: Starting every interview with a mission and context about the interviewee and situation.
Jonny has his goals, and now I have mine. To solve this problem statement I broke it down into four major sections based on my original "How might we..." statements.
Achieve the Goals
During the creation of the user flow diagram, I began with sketches and brainstorming sessions to develop features aligned with the project goals. Moving these sketches into digital low-fidelity prototypes using Figma. I crafted wireframes that maintained the simplicity of my original drawings while adding structure and clarity.
Sketches & Wireframes
I created a user flow diagram to start to narrow down the necessary interactions and plan the journey for the user to follow. This process helped me make sure all necessary goals had a place within the user's logical interactions within the application. This process also gave me guidance on where to start my designs and feature implementations, centering my mind around specific goals.
Ideation & Design
Key User Flows
Users tried to type messages when the option was unavailable, treating the function as a normal text conversation and not selecting prompts for follow-up. I added prompts at the beginning of all new steps and grayed out the message feature when not in use.
User Testing
Users were unsure if they were making progress in the mock interviews. I implemented a “task complete pop-up”. Also adding a tally element to let the user know how many of these objectives have been completed.
Results, Learnings & Takeaways
Final Screens
Users expressed that the fail state was not really punishing. They would see it and skip through. I designed a prompt that told the user that the interviewee had left.
Overview
Designing Interview Insight to meet my objectives was both challenging and rewarding. My primary goal was to develop realistic mock interview scenarios tailored to journalism, yearbook, and social sciences contexts. I created diverse, context-rich simulations to provide students with authentic practice opportunities.
To foster an engaging, interactive experience, I incorporated elements that encourage active learning and participation, ensuring users remained engaged throughout their practice sessions. Emphasizing skill development, I focused on enhancing students' questioning techniques, critical thinking, and ability to interpret responses, which are essential for their academic and professional growth.
The Future
Given a longer timeline, several enhancements could have been made to Interview Insight. Further user testing with a more diverse group of students could provide deeper insights into varied needs and preferences, leading to more refined features. I would also incorporating advanced AI features to create adaptive learning experiences would have made the simulations more dynamic and tailored to individual user needs. Developing a more robust onboarding process would have helped users better understand how to navigate the tool effectively from the start. Furthermore, integrating multimedia elements, such as video tutorials and interactive guides, could have enriched the learning experience. These improvements would have significantly enhanced the application's effectiveness and user satisfaction.