Talentify: App design for an employable Indian generation

Project Overview

Talentify is an Android e-learning platform that aims to deliver high-quality educational content to Indian college students. Talentify lays emphasis on giving the students practical skills that would make them more employable and provides direct access to recruiters from all over India. In this design, we developed information architecture, gamification systems to keep the students engaged, a variety of content types, and a robust visual system to support these different content types.

In the media

Business Today

The context

64% of India’s population is expected to be in the working age group of 15-59 years by 2026 and India will have the largest English speaking population in the world overtaking United States. Yet, 30% of India’s youth are neither employed nor in education or training. With the government’s big push towards economic reforms and Make in India initiative, the services sector and manufacturing both needs skilled workers.

Talentify is trying to play its role in this larger problem by creating a digital platform which has high quality localised content that is aimed at a target audience of college students with special emphasis on involving students who performed at an average level or below.

Usability audit of the old app

The project began with a UX audit of the old app where several critical issues were identified— a confusing navigation system, lack of content hierarchy, failure to engage and an overall buggy implementation. With the pain-points thus identified, we embarked with workshops at the Talentify office to rebuild the structure of the application from the ground up. Through the workshops we held on to our primary objective — “How do we increase engagement within the app?”

PAIN POINTS DISCOVERED

1. Inconsistent brand language. There were severe issues with brand language and visual finesse

2. Non-discoverability. Content was hard to find and difficult to navigate. In some respects, a physical textbook outperformed the app in ease of navigability.

3. Lack of engagement. The app failed to engage the students in its material. When the app fails to engage and doesn’t providing appropriate feedback, the student lacks motivation to continue using the app.

4. Inadequate feedback. Feedback on a student’s performance was confusing in its delivery.

5. Bugs galore. The app was steeped in bugs on the development front

Information architecture

The research process consisted of design sprints and workshops which led to a complete overhaul of the old app. Content in the app was divided into five tabs with the content in each of these tabs cross-linked with each other.

We expected that the app would contain a large collection of content, so we had to design the structure accordingly. The content was divided into courses, modules and lessons within modules. One of the key decisions was to name the top-most level of content in the fashion of real-world professions. This allowed the student to instantly see the applicability of the knowledge and match the content with their own aspirations.

Wireframe construction

I began with paper prototypes which were made clickable on Invision. This allowed me to keep it fast and loose and design with a non-committal frame of mind. Once the overall structure of the app was fixed on paper, we began with digital wireframes, which meant we had to pay closer attention to the nitty-gritties and the nomenclature used within the app. Several iterations later, the five tabs emerged in clarity as the key sections. These sections were meant to work seamlessly with each other with the Tasks section forming the backbone of the app.

Establishing content styles

All the tasks for the day would be presented in the form of cards which would be daily updated. Reports which were rife with unwanted information were greatly reduced to its essential core. Feedback would be presented to the student at every step to provide positive reinforcement. Differing styles of content would help keep the students’ attention.

Keeping students engaged with the content is perhaps the biggest challenge we faced. After all, e-learning apps are infamous for having a large drop-off rate of people within the first week. We crafted a gamification system with Experience points (XP) which a student can gather, along with a virtual currency — coins

Challenges were introduced where the students could compete in real-time to simulate the competitive environment of the classroom. While this may seem like an obvious thing to do to begin with, the real trick was to connect the earning of this virtual currency directly to the student’s ability to apply for jobs. With this, Talentify became an app with the USP that user engagement would lead to real-world rewards.

Everything about Talentify is centered around the student’s career path. Instead of courses, the student takes on a Role such as a Mutual Fund Planner or an Interface designer, depending on his/her interest. In the same vein, the job portal is crystal clear in job openings and what is expected of the student in order to put forward a competitive profile to the recruiters. A bot would aid the communication between prospective employee and recruiter.

Job recruiters can see the student records within the app and the student had access to everything that they need to do in order to maximize their chances to be hired. This was to maintain a two- way transparency within the app which would not only make goals more attainable but also builds trust within the system.

Once the visual design is done, I import the Sketch file into Principle to bring motion into it. Doing this further clarifies in my own mind what the app should feel like, and more importantly, the video footage serves as valuable reference for Talentify’s development team to execute it to make sure the micro-interactions stay true to the design. However, I realized while I was doing it that perhaps this might not be the ideal way to be doing things. Ideally, I should be able to code the motion myself so it is readily deliverable to the client. This would eliminate any unnecessary back and forth.

Start on paper

My drawing skills, inherited from my time in animation came into good use. Doing it on paper is a very non-committal way to ideate. Even better if I use some lower quality paper like a newsprint sheet to further encourage loose exploration.

Treat it like an oil painting

This was the first complete application that I designed, and in doing so, I learned to let go of the trees for the forest. I use the same modus operandi as I do while I paint an oil painting. Get the broad strokes right first, then enter the details to the extent that time allows.

Exemplars in abundance

For every problem that is faced in the design process, a similar problem has been solved by someone else. For this reason, one cannot overestimate the value of collecting exemplars plentifully and generously. It saved me, quite literally, months of time in ideation.