Designing For Career Retention
A design and human experience case study asking “how might we facilitate collaboration and social support in the field of computer science?”
The Problem
The computer science field remains a career that individuals struggle staying in due to the isolation that comes with it. We discovered that people look forward to using programming and problem solving skills in their future careers., however, these same individuals express doubts and worries around failure, isolation and barriers of exclusivity on their paths. These mental struggles are added pressures that led us to seek out “how might we facilitate collaboration and social support in the field of computer science?”
The Solution
Our solutions are a select collection of prototypes for potential future development, and are focused on collaboration and social support. These two themes allow for the maximum possibility of minimizing external stressors throughout individuals career development. By basing our solutions around the below design principles, we believe that not only can we aid in mental health but also career retention can be achieved.
Design Principles
Connect individuals, build relationships and foster teamwork
Allow an all inclusive environment where individuals can learn and come together to support one another
Support individuals through each step throughout their computer science journey
With these design principles in mind, below you will find our four design solutions that we developed.
Professional Connections
This design concept is a supportive and collaborative networking app for computer science professionals. We wanted to focus on an a tool that would be accessibly to many, as opposed to in person. One of the main things we heard during our research was creatively, it's helpful to get feedback from others. This app would be dedicated strictly to the computer science field where users could seek important and useful connections with people or jobs that are normally not readily available in one place.
Growing Together
This program would be available to anyone as early as middle school who is interested in learning to code or pursuing a career in the computer science field. Through the program, a individual is matched with a cohort of people their age and they become a group. These groups become a support system through out the journey of being in computer science, and those in the group can reach out to each other whenever they need help, whether it be at school or at work, if they want to collaborate on a project together, and more.
Personal & Tactile Learning
We noticed that people appreciate the ability to ask peers questions, help others with programming, and learn in a safe space. This concept is for a physical location to demonstrate where learners, specifically within programming, might gather. This learning space gives learners the opportunity to interact with each other in a safe space. This space hosts a small number of computers as well as an atmosphere of encouragement and exploration around computer learning.
Skill & Interest Based Connections
This solution is an online platform where one can find or create coding challenges of varying subjects and levels of difficulty. People can then form a team to try to tackle these challenges. During research we learned that interviewees liked working in group settings because it helped them learn by giving them an opportunity to see their peers demonstrate skills and try out different skills themselves. This platform addresses how people can target new skills and get matched with others that have different strengths, as well as connects you with people who are looking to collaborate.
Our Approach
The information gathered from our research methods helped inform our design recommendations and overall solutions that address a wide range of people interested in Computer Science. We were able to better hone in on our problem through a series of 7 in-depth interviews, that used affinity diagramming to help individuals recall their computer science journey and help us understand their individual experiences. Additionally, we sent out a broad surveys, to those in the field, to cross reference our interview findings and improve the scope of our design problem. Lastly, we spent a good amount of time synthesizing our results in order to solidify our final solutions.
What I Learned
One-on-one interviewing gives important and necessary qualitative data. This qualitative data can help to propel your research and broaden your view on the area studied, especially when used to interview underrepresented groups. Our interviews focused on a range of ages, different ethnicities, and different sex of people that are typically overlooked in the computer science field. Recognizing this, helped us to recruit interviewees with intent and give crucial insights to inform our designs.
My Favorite Part
Since we had a lot of qualitative information from our interviews we spent a lot of time ideating and asking “why” questions to narrow our area of focus. Getting to organize the information and get to the core ideas of our problem, while at times seemed never ending, made us feel that our solutions were sound. Getting to see where we started and ended was fun and exciting.
