Design a career counseling app for students in India.
- Luis Neilson
Clarification questions:
- Is this a web app or a mobile app that we are designing? – Mobile App
- Is it for particular student group e.g. the group who is graduating from class 10/12 or group of users graduating from their Bachelor’s degree and exploring options for masters – former
The main personas I can think of are
- Student seeking counselling
- Counsellor
- Parents
We’ll consider #1 i.e. students seeking counselling
Now a typical customer journey and the customer need/actions would be as below
| Customer Journey -> | Thought of planning about career after class 10/12 | Explore different options for counsellors | Use the counselling app and get the career guidance | |
| JTBD | Need to plan the steps ahead after the current grade/class
Assumption is that this would come after the student has appeared for the exams and even after the exams |
Need to find out who’s the best counsellor that can help guide in career matters | Get Career advise | |
| Customer Actions
What is the customer actually doing throughout their experience?
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Below would be some of the important user needs:
- Need to shortlist a right counsellor option
- The career counsellor (online/offline), should be able to understand the person, the exam results and be able to provide better options to build a better career
- Career counsellor should help/guide in the colleges/universities option with data on admission process/fees/placements etc.
- For any admission process, if there are competitive exams, counsellor should provide the details and some tutor/coaching services options
- Career counsellor should be able to help/guide with the application process/SOPs etc. if there are any such requirements
We’ll build the mobile app considering the above user needs
| Feature | Effort | Impact/Outcome | Revenue Potential | MVP |
| Provide the self assessment functionality to help narrow down the career option for the user based on his/her interest/marks achieved/domestic vs international course preferences | H | H | M | Y |
| Provide recommendation of career choices based on the assessment result | M | H | M | Y |
| Provide information on what other candidates plan/planned with similar assessment results | M | M | L | N |
| For a selected career choice, provide colleges option based on the grade student has achieved (or anticipating to achieve) | M | H | L | Y |
| For a selected career choice, provide option to see top x colleges, last year’s cutoff, placement figures, course fees etc. | M | H | L | Y |
| Provide a premium feature to chat with a person to handhold during the counselling journey, help with adhoc queries, guide with SOPs etc. | H | H | H | N |
| Provide language support so that all the information/features can be made available in the chosen language | H | M | M | N |
| Capture information from the user on what career move they shortlisted and proceeded with, to use that data to guide new users | M | M | M | N |
| Rating of the colleges/normalized feedback comments by the users from different sources | M | L | L | N |
Based on the above, the items shortlisted for MVP are the ones that would be taken up on priority and the app would be developed

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