TAP3D
Ongoing
Creating a platform for helping young individuals explore and choose their careers in advanced manufacturing industries
Capstone project with Miki Bin(Design Founder) and Tim Raftis(CEO) at TAP3D↗️. The task was to design a plaform for helping young individuals explore and choose career in advanced manufacturing industries.
Our team started looking into understanding the motivations, experiences, challenges, and decision-making factors that influence community college students' pursuit of technical careers.
You can read the detailed research report I presented to TAP3D below. In this project, I talk about the process utilized to create this report.
Next quarter (June - August 2024) I will be taking the learnings from this research to come up with concepts and prototypes.
Team
Jiho Kim(AR designer)
2 Designers
Duration
March 2024 - present
(12 weeks, ongoing)
Tools
Figma
Skills
Literature Review
Qualitative Interviews
Rapid prototyping
AR Design
Background
The manufacturing industry in the US today is facing certain key challenges, one of which is
navigating persistent talent obstacles in relation to the ongoing shortage of skilled labor[1].
1. 2024 manufacturing industry outlook | Deloitte Insights.
The tight skilled-labor market is one of the main issues being faced by the advanced manufacturing industry.
Who is TAP3D? What is their desire outcome?
Our capstone sponsor, TAP 3D, is currently working in the training simulation VR space for blue-collar individuals to match them with technician-level job positions in such industries.
Even though manufacturers are ready to hire, recruiters cannot find an effective way to obtain good blue- collar worker data, or connection channels to reach candidates. Tap3D ultimately wants to connect as many skilled laborers as possible to technician job opportunities through its recruiting platform.
What WE did
Our research aims to bridge the gap between TAP’s product offering (technical VR training) and their new job portal
(matching trained individuals with jobs/ recruiters) by generating insights from the career exploration practices of
individuals pursuing courses in community colleges.
How do community college students explore and choose careers in advanced manufacturing?
Secondary research
This is how we kicked off…
In the very first step, we compared various programs that relate to areas of interest of TAP (AR/VR training, tutorials, career guidance, AI assistants and so on ).
competitive analysis chart on figma
We learned that…
01
"Real-time instructor feedback in virtual reality (VR) training environments accelerates learning, reduces confusion, and improves the overall experience.
02
Collaborations between recruiting platforms and universities provide tailored job recommendations and career event information, benefiting users.
04
Voice AI technology offers convenient and low-cost engagement, potentially increasing user willingness to utilize a platform.
03
Presenting statistical data and job profiles engagingly and keeping information up-to-date is essential for effectiveness.
05
A simple interface, intuitive navigation, easy-to-read information, and features like company rankings, comparisons, user ratings, and salary assessments create a relaxed experience, lowering usage barriers.
These elements enhance a platform's appeal and foster user preference, ultimately improving the user experience and the effectiveness of career-related resources. Looking into these platforms gave us insight into the emerging and ongoing technologies and positives and negatives in today’s market.
Research question
Dive Deeper into Research Area
When conducting research, it's common to start with a broad research question that guides the entire study. However, as we delve deeper into our secondary research and gain more knowledge about our topic, we realize that our main research question is quite complex and has many facets.
To address this, we decide to create sub-research questions that are more specific and focused. These sub-questions help break down our primary question into smaller, more manageable components, allowing us to explore different aspects of our topic in greater depth.
User Interview
Meet the real users
Based on our research questions, we visitied four different community colleges in Seattle offering manufacturing-related programs to interview our target users.
We got a chance to interview…
8 Participants
(age 20-50 yrs) enrolled in Technical /Engineering programs
1 Program manager
for a technical course
data analysis
—-
We affinity diagrammed quotes from our interview into major findings groups.
In our card-sorting activity, we did quantitative analysis by placing values on listing element ranks.
Affinity diagramming the quotes from our interviews on Figma.
insight
—-
From the interview, we sorted through each 30 minute interview and synthesized our information by doing the following.
We affinity diagrammed quotes from our interview into major findings groups.
In our card-sorting activity, we did quantitative analysis by placing values on listing element ranks.