Mind the Gap
Service Design / UX Design / UI Design
Mind the Gap helps high school students use gap years to make more informed decisions regarding their post-secondary destination & career.
Timeline: 6 months
Team: Solo Dolo
Problem
1 in 3 students who pursue post-secondary education withdraw from their first program
Post-secondary education is seen as vital for both professional success as well as personal growth. However, 1 in 3 students who pursue post-secondary education withdraw form their first program, with 52% citing a poor fit between them and their chosen program.
The vast majority of high school students are simply not ready to pursue post-secondary education. However, the existing education model in Ontario rushes students out of high school despite them being ill-prepared.
How might we help improve post-secondary persistence for students graduating from high school, so that they complete the program they start?
Solution
“Taking a year off before college or university often leads to better grades, increased job satisfaction and even higher pay later in life.”
- Jared Lindzen, Globe and Mail
The solution was to reframe an existing concept, the gap year. Traditionally gap years are reserved for students taking time to vacation, see the world and take a break. However, this period can and should be reframed as a period for personal and professional self-discovery as well as a time to gain relevant practical experience.
Mind the Gap is a tool that does just that, helping students find relevant activities that fit their needs and objectives, all the while helping them prepare for post-secondary education.
Mind the Gap - Promotional Video
Design Process
The process to execute this project took 6 months. Although the following graphic indicates a linear process, much of it occurred concurrently and chaotically.
Research
Conducted user interviews with 10 people from 3 key stakeholder groups to find relevant insights.
There was a plethora of literature that indicated a positive correlation between gap years and their positive impact on post-secondary persistence. The objective now was to understand the barriers students faced when attempting to take time off after high school. To do so I conducted user interviews with 10 people from 4 key stakeholder groups to find relevant insights.
High School Students
Focused on getting into university - all the advice and conversation in school surrounds this topic.
Some students are far more aware of their long term plans and objectives than others.
Few students have relevant practical experience informing their objectives nor do they know how to go about getting said experience.
Educators
Unable to sufficiently provide students with enough assistance to make informed long-term decisions for their career/post-secondary education.
Felt many students were too passive - more comfortable following the flow of their peers than upending the status quo.
Felt that gap years would have a positive impact on student.
Changing perceptions regarding gap years will be critical as they have a negative connotation.
Parents
Parents fear taking time off after high school would lead to their children never pursuing post-secondary education
There is a degree of social discomfort for parents with the idea of their child straying from the “ideal path”
Defining Objectives
The primary objective is to help high school students plan out an intentional gap year.
Find relevant activities that for their gap year
A key component in ensuring students have a valuable gap year will be to provide them with relevant and accessible activities for their gap year.
Destigmatize gap years by helping change existing perceptions
It’s clear that amongst both students and parents gap years are not held in high esteem.
Help students build a plan for their gap year
Gap years are by and large beneficial to students. By helping them approach this period with intentionality, we can ensure a productive and fruitful period.
Help students bring their parents on board for their gap year
Parents are a key decision maker in a student’s life, it’s critical that students have their support when choosing to pursue a gap year.
Defining the Journey
With the insights derived from my research I created a journey map. The objective of this exercise was to have a high level understanding of the experience of students who drop out of their first program. Then to identify core places of intervention that my solution could help address.
Ideating a Solution
I tasked student testers with building a gap year plan and simulating a conversation with their parents.
The journey informed a simple “quiz” style prototype where I tasked student testers with inhabiting the mind of a persona and building a gap year plan. With their plan in mind I simulated their conversation with their parents. The objective of this prototype was to understand what information students needed to adequately build out their gap year, and whether they felt prepared with that information to speak with their parents.
Flow & Structure
The insights from the paper prototype informed the flow and structure of the application. This helped me articulate how students would go from arriving on the app to making a plan to having a facilitated conversation with their parents.
Lo-Fidelity Prototyping
A mobile interface reduced the formality of the process, allowing me to use interaction patterns that reflected “play” rather than work.
The lo-fidelity prototypes served to inform how this proposed tool would function with the context of a mobile application. I elected to build a mobile solution as this reduced the formality of the process, allowing me to use interaction patterns that reflected “play” rather than work.
They informed the hierarchy of the information and the user’s flow through a variety of tasks. The app was then tested with 5 participants before being iterated upon at a higher fidelity.
Introducing Mind the Gap
Mind the gap is a mobile app that allows students to build out a plan for their gap year.
Onboarding Experience
Understand who students are and their aspirations/objectives. A simple swipe & drag based interaction fulfilled the objective of “fun”.
Activities
Leverage that information to provide relevant activities for students to do during their gap year.
Result
I showcased the resulting Invision prototype to students, parents and educators who responded positively to the proposed feature-set.
2 key pieces of feedback I received were:
Further articulate the interactions students would be having with businesses/organizations who were hiring volunteers.
Develop more activities to facilitate the conversation between parents and their children.
Learnings
Easy to get lost in the weeds
When you’re attacking a problem space so broad it’s very easy to get lost in the weeds. It’s far more effective to pare the problem down to something small and easy to execute than it is to create something that tackles the whole space.
Prototype early, prototype often
Coming into this process prototyping seemed like a much larger, and much more invested of a process. However, prototypes needn’t be complex or refined, even something that loosely replicates your end functionality can be valuable provided you have actionable metrics.
covid update
It’s honestly a bit heart wrenching to know how valuable a gap year might be for students during the Covid-19 pandemic. With remote learning being the modus operandi during this time there is even less to be gained from pursuing a post-secondary degree.
Reflection
This project was a cumulative thesis project for my Bachelor’s of Interaction Design, and an incredible learning experience. Although it took 6 months to get to this stage, there are still so many refinements I wish to make. My key learnings from this project are as follows:
1. Education is a big problem space, don’t try to solve it all
Education is such a multi-faceted problem space, and the reality is everyone has an opinion. I found nailing down the challenge I wished to address as
2. Scope creep is a killer
3. Working alone is fun, working with people is fun-er
As students we complain loud and often about “group projects”. But after working on such a large project for 6 months I’ve realized how important it is to have a diverse group of thinkers around you. It’s critical to work with people whom you can bounce ideas off of, and to whom you have to rationalize your decision making.
What I would do differently
Given a chance to repeat this project I would definitely shrink my scope from a 3 stage process to a single well defined product. Focusing on how