Start Now
Start Now is an app like college counseling, which helps students get ideas of what future college majors might have and what is the relationship with their current courses in high school. Start Now will give the right choice of college majors based on one’s interests.
Tools
Figma
Qualtrics
Microsoft Project.
Lucidchart
Role
UI/UX Researcher
Market Researcher
Project Manager
Time
Feb - April 2020
(14 weeks)
Type
Group Project
Background
Almost a third of first-time college students choose a major and then change it at least once within three years.
Major changes is the No.1 thing to improve students success.
High school Consolers in some states are failing to meet college requirements and expectations for students.
Online Career Quizzes and Personality tests exist throughout the web however lack a collection of specific data and provide inaccurate recommendations for people.
Problem
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 80 percent of students in the United States end up changing their major at least once. High school students highly need help with selecting courses, building up interests, and choosing a degree path before going to college. However, there are limited numbers of counselors in each school, and there are limited resources students can access to.
High school students transition into college with no idea what their major should be, leading to multiple major changes, wasting time and money.
Solution
Our app Start Now will show students the suggested courses to achieve their wanted major in college and even career, and provide the student with a list of courses that can be applied as potential college credits or will prepare them for classes in college in advance.
Preliminary Plan
As the project manager, I planned out the whole process for a three-month project and assigned work to every team member. Meanwhile, I am the UI/UX team manager. I checked all the work before reporting to our stakeholders.
We used the Traditional Waterfall Model (SDLC) to build our product. In order to make everything clear to each team member’s task and their deadlines. I made this diagram to visualize the work and relationship amongst them.
High-level Technical Architecture
This technical architecture only concludes our initial idea of testing students’ potential major or career based on their interest and answered survey. And this High Level Architecture Diagram gives an overview of how the app security is ensured and how the process of interacting with the user works.
Target Audience
High School Students
Teachers
Parents
Stakeholders
High Schools
Education Board of Education
College counseling companies
Marketing/Sales Representatives
Parents/Guardians
Scope
Software Platform focus on AMERICAN student
Support IOS and ANDROID system (Application software)
Online course advertisements and Membership system
Custom-tailored production supported by algorithm
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
Unique feature (Generate from students’ interest)
App Available (most counseling service are web based.
Self-check and self-exploration(No extra communication)
Automatic updating of database
Weakness
Competitive market
Capital turnover ability (As a small size independent corp. It is hard to access money.
Rarely known by people (no brand advantage)
Opportunities
Growing market of college counseling service
Creates preparations for students success in the future
Takes advantage of time management and prevents any delays from occurring
Threat
Potential new companies can begin to transition from web -based to application-based
High Schools might neglect these services as they will only utilize the resources they already have.
Competitor Analysis
We found five popular college consulting platforms and compared them in six aspects: charge, device availability, ease of use, quality of support, and ease of setting up.
Magic Quadrant
We have a great vision but we are have to learn a lot more to get to a challenger or a leader level.
Our app is unique because none of the other competitors have exactly the same idea as us.
Market Research
❏ Over 70% of high school students show an interest in our product.
❏ Most high school students are using both iOS and macOS, few of them are using Android and Windows.
❏ Over 80% of high school students declare they will take AP courses and want to know more about this.
❏ When asked, "What other functions do you expect to include in our app? "
"Perhaps a list of minors related to the major recommendations.
"Major Introduction"
"brief descriptions of majors, future career paths, ratings of the institution's program for specific majors "
Finding 1
Over 77% of high school students want to decide their major before going to college.
Finding 2
The most popular consulting platform for high school student is Naviance. .
Finding 3
Rate likeness of possible features in our app: 1. College Major Lists 2. AP Courses Lists 3. Test: Your possible major recommendations
Feature Ideation
Student can explore different majors and check brief descriptions of majors, future career paths, ratings of the institution's program for specific majors
AP course section helps students get ideas of what future college majors might have and what is the relationship with their current courses in high schools.
Student can save their favorite courses and majors in their saved section to compare and serve as a checklist for the future.
Reading section includes articles that retrieved from different schools or education department to popularize knowledge about majors and careers.
Chat function to have a 1-on-1 conversation with online advisor solving your courses doubts. ( potential membership system)
Designing the solution
In the lo-fi prototypes, I sketched the main section interfaces and several potential dashboard design.
