Welcome to

Puco App

PUCO is a digital platform which leverages the power of technologies and the human knowledge & experience to help students to strive for a better future.

The vision of PUCO is to enable students to explore their inner greatness, enhance knowledge and coach them to pursue future careers efficiently

Honors & Awards

Introducing PUCO

PUCO - Pufferfish Career Counselling, a hybrid platform where technology meets human knowledge to provide students with the most comprehensive, personalised guidance, and empower them to find the right career path. The target audience is high-schoolers, in Vietnam, The Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.

By leveraging the power of technology and mentors’ knowledge, PUCO brings to students the most appropriate career guidance, helping them to explore their inner greatness towards their dream careers efficiently.

Commercial Video

Step-by-step guide on how to use our app, take users through each feature, ensuring they can easily navigate and make the most out of everything the app has to offer.

PUCO Three Key Features

Helping students to discover their inner greatness

Career Discover

Improvises a way for students to understand their interests and competencies through quizzes and mini-games.

Mentor Mapping

Provides a huge pool of professionals from varied industries for students to connect with and seek guidance.

Career Development

Keeping track of students' progress. Evaluate students' knowledge and competency. Helps students to adjust their development plan to be more appropriate.

PUCO Design Journey

This section outlines the design approach for the Puco project, detailing the key steps taken to develop its structure and functionality. This section outlines the design approach for the Puco project, detailing the key steps taken to develop its structure and functionality.

The Design Process

PUCO design process draws inspiration from the Double Diamond process developed by by the British Design Council in 2005, comprising 4 key stages: discover, define, develop, and deliver. This section outlines the design approach for the Puco project, detailing the key steps taken to develop its structure and functionality.

STAGE 01

Discover

Focus on exploring and gathering a wide range of insights, uncovering underlying needs, and identifying potential problems through the user research and empathetic understanding.

The circumstance
and challenges of SouthEast Asia

In the past three decades, economic growth in Southeast Asia (SEA) has been the envy of the world. SEA’s rapid economic growth not only improves the Asian standard of living but also creates many career opportunities. However, one of the most significant issues that students - in this region, deal with is a lack of career guidance and information. This is a trigger for the major problem of a high unemployment rate.

According to The Global Economy, The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam are facing the highest unemployment rate in SEA (2023), which is equivalent to 24.55 millions unemployed across the region.

Skills mismatching is often raised as an important challenge in many low- and middle-income countries. Such views are often based on the fact that young, better-educated jobseekers have difficulties finding employment and that their fields of study tend to concentrate on subjects other than science, technology, engineering and mathematics, such as economics, management or law.

In reality, very rare companies in Southeast Asia offer career counselling services that help students to solve this problem. Most career understanding & advice come from parents, friends, fragmented articles on the internet or short events held by educational institutions. This lacking of information leads to skills mismatching and a high employment rate after graduation.

In addition, Education and training history are only entry-level selection criteria from a recruitment perspective. Graduate students are best placed to know what are skills and knowledge required for their future job as well as the journey to achieve them.

Conducting
User Interviews

The interview conducted with a diverse sample of 40 high-school students across various personas including urban and rural backgrounds. The duration for each session aproximately 1 hour per student to delve into their perspectives.

Throughout these sessions, I focused on gaining insights into their understanding of career paths, identifying their innate strengths and aspirations, and exploring their strategies for preparing for future careers.

By engaging deeply with each participant, I gathered rich user data that provided invaluable context for creating effective solutions to address problems.

Some Findings derived from the interview

Most of students have a misconception about careers and market demands.
Students find the career navigating sessions are inefficient and boring.
Many students expect to connect with experienced people in their interest careers.
Many students received inaccurate career advises from friends and relatives.
Most of schools are lacking of career navigating lesson/ session.
Many students are overwhelmed by inaccurate career information on the internet
Some students paid for career counselling services, but it turned out inefficient.

Build Goal-Directed Persona

Throughout the user interview process, I collected necessary information to build up goal-directed personas.

With a focus on two primary personas, urban students and rural students, I aim to explore the unique challenges and needs of students in the different areas.

Urban persona represents students who studying in bustling metropolises,
While rural persona embody those in countryside or small-town settings.

Throughout the interviews, students were tasked with specific objectives aligned with their educational and personal goals, such as identifying career paths based on their interests. By engaging students in these tasks, I gained valuable insights into their behaviors, preferences, and expectations.

Understand User Experience by User Journey Map

By mapping out these journeys, I gain insights into pain points, preferences, and opportunities for improvement. This understanding serves as a foundation for devising tailored solutions that effectively address users' needs and enhance their experience.

Findings derived from this method

- Students express frustration in defining their future careers due to a lack of self-understanding and knowledge about potential career paths.

- Students are inundated with an overwhelming amount of career information on the internet, making it difficult for them to discern which sources are accurate and reliable.

- Students are facing a lack of career guidance from both their schools and teachers, hindering their ability to navigate their future paths effectively.

Empathise User Interaction by UX Storyboard

By utilizing UX storyboards, I aim to visually represent the user's journey and pain points in a narrative format.

This approach helps ensure that all team members are on the same page regarding user experiences and facilitates easier discussion and brainstorming sessions about the identified problems.

STAGE 02

Define

Analyse and synthesize insights gathered from the research phase, helping me clearly articulate the core problem or challenge that needs to be addressed, ensuring that the solutions I develop are focused and relevant.

Analysis and Synthesis

In the second stage of my design process, my primary task revolves around analysis and synthesis. As I explore the user data gathered during the previous stage, my focus shifts to comprehensively synthesizing and dissecting this information. Through careful analysis, I aim to discover meaningful insights and patterns that can help me to define the root-cause problem of this product.

By synthesizing the diverse array of user data, I aim to discover key findings that will inform my design solutions, ensuring they resonate deeply with the users.

Top 3 Findings derived from the user research

Don't understand careers well
>> Accounted: 80%
Hard to connect or have a conversation with experienced people in the interest industry
>> Accounted: 70%
Desire to gain a deep understanding of career-path and consultancy to get into a specific career
>> Accounted: 60%

STAGE 03

Develop

Focus on refining and prototyping potential solutions, testing ideas through iteration, and honing in on the most viable option that addresses the problem effectively.

Brainstorming

- Objective: Generate as much as possible ideas/ solutions

- Participants: 4 People

- Duration: 2 hours

The key methodology we focused on this stage is Brainstorming. It is a combination of informal problem solving and lateral thinking. The technique intends for participants to come up with eccentric ideas. Some of these thoughts and ideas are crafted into original and creative solutions to problems, whereas help to spark additional ideas.

To perform the brainstorming UX ideation technique, start by laying out the problem we want to solve and identifying the objectives of a possible solution. Then, try to generate solutions individually before bringing everyone together to share.

Last but not least, we conducted voting upon generated solutions based on 3 key criteria i.e Feasibility, Desirability and Viability. Every idea was discussed and considered carefully before making a final decision to go further or not.

Solutions aimed to solve these problems below:

- Misconceptions about careers due to poor and fragmented information in their local areas

- Find difficult to choose an appropriate career

- Hard to connect and get advice from experienced people in a specific field

- Do not how to develop themselves to get into a favourite career.

Selected Features

1. Career Recommendation - Automatically recommend relevant careers to students based on scientific methodologies.

2. Mentor Mapping - Connect students with experts or experienced people in the field.

3. Career Portal - Provide students an up-to-date career portal on the market.

4. Self-Development Plan - Help experts to keep track with their students to make sure that students are going on the right way to meet defined goals.

Page Hierarchy by Sitemap

Below is the sitemap of PUCO that was built based on Card-Sorting Methodology

To ensure a user-centric design, I facilitated a comprehensive card-sorting session involving three adept designers. Over the duration of 3 hours, we collectively sifted through the information architecture, structuring and prioritizing the content to align seamlessly with user needs and preferences.

By leveraging the insights derived from this collaborative exercise, the resulting sitemap for PUCO embodies a user-centric approach, facilitating intuitive navigation and enhancing overall user experience.

Build up the FlowChart

Below is a User Flow derived from the ideation workshop.

Through collaborative discussions with designers, we generated multiple flow charts, evaluate their respective strengths and weaknesses. After long discussion and consideration, we concluded with six main flows that form the backbone of the PUCO.

These flows serve as a comprehensive blueprint, guiding the development and enhancement of the app to ensure a seamless user experience.

Structure the information by OOUX

In order to structure information on screens and approaches the interface from a holistic point of view, we would like to apply Object Oriented UX (OOUX).

Short description of this methodology: OOUX is a philosophy and a set of principles that helps UX designers break down complexity, understand convoluted business requirements, synthesize research, and facilitate collaboration with stakeholders, SMEs, and developers. Armed with OOUX, teams can create more efficient digital products that are easier to design and develop—and easier for users to understand

Regarding this methodology, we are getting started from define objects possibly in our product. Below are key objects of PUCO such as Career Discover, Quiz, Quiz Result, Career and Expert.

Next, we defined the relationships among objects.
E.g: Quiz Object contains Child Object Quiz Result, Quiz Result contains a smaller object is Career…

The visual below depicts PUCO Objects and their relationships in the system.

Based on this result we will come up with proper wireframes on the next stage

PUCO's User Interfaces

Since the main targeted audience of PUCO is high-school students, the design directions of PUCO are friendly user interfaces, colourful illustrations to increase engagement, bright colours and high text contrast to help students read the content well.

In order to communicate with students efficiently, we create our brand mascot - PUCO, a talkable puffer fish. PUCO is not only a friend but also a supporter to guide students on every step in their journey to find appropriate careers.

From wireframes to design

Converting wireframes to design involves transforming the information architecture (A.I) and functionalities of PUCO into user interfaces. This process integrates color schemes, typography, imagery, and interactive elements, refining the initial concept into a polished and cohesive design solution.

PUCO's
Design System & Visuals

The foundation of PUCO’s design system is rooted in atomic design principles. To build this design system, I get started with Atom like colors, typography, and scaffolding. From there, I systematically assembled these atoms into components, grouped them into cohesive structures, and developed templates for various use cases.

Throughout this process, I ensure that the design system remains influenced by the specific needs and preferences of PUCO's target audience - high school students, as well as the overarching design style and direction

Enhance UX with Mascot & Gamification

Recognizing the potential for increased engagement among high-school students, I designed PUCO as the mascot and instructor within the app, adeptly conversing with users and offering step-by-step guidance.

The PUCO mascot is inspired by the imagery of the pufferfish. PUCO demonstrates the dedication and a keen eye for detail, ensuring that every student's journey through the app is both enriching and seamless. With its charming personality and reliable assistance, PUCO stands poised to make learning experiences not only effective but also enjoyable for users of all backgrounds.

My mascot concept - Angler Fish & Puffer Fish

What makes PUCO standout?

Leverage the technology and human experience to offer students a comprehensive guidance, from personal to career development.

Huge pool of professionals from varied industries for students to connect with and seek guidance.

Elevate self-directed learning for students to proactively achieve the goals.

An up-to-date career portal covering in-demand, emerging jobs.

Cartoonish character concept design, and gamification to increase users' engagement.

MORE ABOUT

PUCO

: : Hybrid Career Exploration & Counselling

Southeast Asia, which includes 14 countries and a population of 675 million people, has seen one of the world's fastest-growing markets in recent years. Nevertheless, one of the most critical problems they are facing is Skill Mismatching. This problem is accounted as the major cause of the high unemployment rate and negative impacts on the economy. Although some schools in Southeast Asia offer career navigation events as part of their educational system, this traditional approach is inefficient and severely limited. As a consequence, many students have misconceptions about careers and prefer to apply for courses that

will lead to high-paying jobs in the future, such as engineering, law, and medicine, rather than pursuing

their dreams.

To solve this problem, I came up with PUCO, a Hybrid Career Exploration & Counselling platform that is built based on research of Market and Culture, a deep understanding of users, and scientific methodologies such as MBTI, HOLLAND Test and skills and career test from UK Government tool.

The vision of PUCO is to help students understand their inner greatness and toward relevant careers in the future.

An Appropriate Job, A Bright Future!

PUCO’s theory is based on psychological methodologies and scientific facts i.e., Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) methodology, The Holland Codes, or the Holland Occupational Themes (RIASEC) methodology, and National Careers Service Skills assessment and Job Profiles.

The PUCO design philosophy is based on user-centred design (UCD). UCD is an iterative design process in which designers focus on users and their needs throughout the design process. To develop an understanding of user needs, designers use a combination of investigative methods and tools (e.g.,

surveys and interviews) and generative ones (e.g., brainstorming).

Based on this design philosophy, I devised a five-stage design process: define, research, ideate, prototype, and evaluate. My design process is founded on my creative practice and the project's context. Fundamentally, my design process is influenced by Simon's seven-step design thinking cycle from 1972

and The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design's Design Thinking.

Key features of PUCO

PUCO aims to provide students with the three primary features listed below.

Self-exploration - Throughout mini-games and quizzes to help students learn more about their inner greatness such as their personalities, abilities, and communication preferences. This stage's idea is mostly based on scientific and psychological approaches like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI),

HOLLAND, and the UK Government National Careers Service (National Careers Service 2022). At the end of the test, Students will receive thorough information about their careers and skills, as well as a mascot that represents them and a radar chart that shows their skills.

Career Recommendation - Using the test results as a guide, the system will analyse and recommend careers for students. Students can view the matching rate (%) for each recommended career, which is determined by algorithms based on the career attributes, criteria, and the user's empathy. Furthermore,

by clicking on any specific career, they can view comprehensive career information, including job descriptions, salary ranges, working hours, and particularly career paths.

Mentor Mapping - Experienced mentor is always an indispensable part of PUCO, a bridge between students and mentors in the areas of interest. In essence, each mentor adheres to a specific career path. Mentors not only provide students with a big picture of a specific career, but also guidance on how to

13 effectively pursue their goals. The PUCO platform allows mentors and students to communicate whenever a student establishes a connection with one. It is especially important to communicate with mentors to obtain a thorough understanding of a career, market demand, and requirements.

The platform not only helps in communicating, but also opens up new ways for mentors to assist students in growing professionally. The development journey is one of the unique features. The foundation of the Development Journey is the practical experience of mentors and, in particular, the skills of students. Basically, the journey is not only a compass to achieve a job but also the tool for both mentor and students to keep track of their long-term goals.

The future of PUCO

At the end of the day, my design process's final goal is to create a solution that is desirable, feasible, and viable. This means that my product should meet a user's needs, be feasible to implement, and have a financial model. Therefore, Feasibility, viability, and desirability are the three most important criteria that I have always considered while developing the PUCO project. I strongly believe that balancing three criteria is the key to PUCO's future success.

Starting with desirability, the majority of PUCO features are created using data from user research, which is obtained by using scientific research approaches like context research, user interviews, use journey maps, and UX storyboards. Additionally, performing user research provides me with practical ideas for defining and improving the product, identifying the user pain points and usability issues. These enable me to effectively justify and improve the product plans. Moreover, the theory foundation of PUCO is psychological and scientific methodologies such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) methodology, The Holland Codes or Holland Occupational Themes (RIASEC) methodology, and National Careers Service Skills assessment and Job Profiles. They not only provide an important foundation for design strategy, but also assist me in creating the best product for users.

Regarding feasibility, this is always considered an indispensable part of PUCO. A proper development plan not only allows us to convert the idea into a real product, but it also allows us to efficiently persuade investors. PUCO will stick with the MVP (minimal viable product) version in the early stages of development. An MVP enables me to test market demand for the product, determining whether potential users require and will use it without having to invest a lot of money. Based on these findings, I can either rework the solution their product offers to allow for more market differentiation or develop an entirely new concept.

“Big things have small beginnings!”. Although PUCO has only been created over a short period, there is no doubt about the potential future of this project. After the MA Design course, I will look for rooms to convert this idea into a real product and connect with people who are truly interested in this project, for further and sustainable development in the future.

Finally, I strongly believe that PUCO can catalyse positive changes for people, society, and nature!