Project Overview
Quinncia
Quinncia is an AI tool aimed at improving students' career readiness through resume analysis and mock interviews. Marketed to universities, it helps career advisors give feedback to more students.
However, the CEO's reluctance to conduct thorough UX research and reliance solely on current advisor feedback resulted in missing crucial student insights.
Impact
- Addressed usability issues and design flaws based on student feedback.
- Convinced the CEO to hire a full-time UX designer to continuously improve the product.
- Increased student engagement boosted sales, leading to a successful $1.43M fundraising round in 2019.
Role
UX Researcher
Team
UX Researcher
CTO
CEO/Founder (stakeholder)
Deliverables
Usability Audit
UX Research Report
Insights
How might we improve the student experience to communicate value, simplify onboarding, and create engaging AI interactions that encourage continuous improvement in interviewing skills and resumes?
Quinncia's initial design overlooked crucial user insights, leading to low student engagement, which I uncovered through targeted UX research.
Unclear Value Proposition
The product's benefits and functionality were not clearly communicated early in the overly complicated user journey. This increased the chance of students abandoning the onboarding flow.
Overemphasis on Formality
Requirements such as scheduling mock interviews for some later date and time and dressing formally seemed outdated and unnecessary, adding to students' reluctance to use the platform.
High Cognitive Load
Confusing instructions, non-standard user flows, and an unsettling AI voice created a high cognitive load, making the product difficult to use and leading to low engagement with students.
Define and Ideate
Key Solutions
Simplify the user flow. Rather than requiring users to schedule an interview, let users practice with basic questions without completing the lengthy onboarding. This addresses all three issues: unclear value proposition, overly formal, and high cognitive load problems.
Some examples of basic questions that are not major dependent, and therefore don't need your resume to generate:
- Tell me about yourself.
- What are your strengths?
- What are your weaknesses?
Ensure error prevention and ease of use. The original design failed to prevent students from making mistakes at several points in the user flow. The combination of a omniscient AI voice and an unaccommodating UI made users feel frustrated and unintelligent, especially when they were already nervous.
Set student expectations with visible status indicators and consistent processes. The original design aimed for surprise to create novelty, but this approach confused and unnerved students.
Design with empathy and flexibility. The founder assumed that students nearing graduation already knew how to write a resume. However, allowing students to upload poorly written resumes increased his costs. Providing basic resume tips would not only add value for students but also reduce the startup expenses.
