iLAND

C&A

U&S

B&E

T&R

In short

High school students, particularly in Dutch higher secondary education (HAVO/VWO), grapple with career choices. While decisions should revolve around three pivotal questions: "What do I want?" (interests), "What am I capable of?" (academic performance), and "Who am I?" (personality), personality often takes a back seat. Also, a disconnect is recognized between the student's self-awareness and translation of this into meaningful questions and activities for exploration, demanding more guidance. Additionally, digitalized CEG introduces challenges like reduced engagement and perceived solitary decision-making. In response, iLAND emerges as a hybrid solution, fostering collaboration, providing a multi-perspective view, and transforming career decisions into an engaging visual journey for students.

grade

course

COACHES

T.B.D.

Tilde Bekker

Final Bachelor Project

The process

The design process adhered to the principles of Design Thinking, navigating through the iterative steps of empathizing, defining, ideation, prototyping, and testing. Embracing a non-chronological order, each step was complemented by thoughtful reflection. This iterative approach fostered a comprehensive exploration of user needs, problem definition, creative ideation, and rigorous testing.

The project's trajectory was significantly shaped by the proactive engagement of stakeholders, ranging from high school deans and CEG method professionals to education design experts and end-users,

alongside the experts and teaching assistants from the Games & PlaySquad at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Their active involvement not only played a pivotal role in steering the project direction but also proved instrumental in validating key design decisions. This collaborative approach laid a foundation for the design.

The project concluded with the development of a high-fidelity prototype of the iLAND toolkit, providing a convincing experience according to end-users and other involved stakeholders, tested in depth with end-users and UX/UI experts through a usability test and cognitive walkthrough.

Discover in which island areas you are most empowered using adventures, career keys, tools, and the inner compass. Choose what suits you best. Witness the island areas grow along with your exploration, and discover what this means.

1

Who knows you best and is on your personal radar? Explore your island together with your network. In which island area do they believe you flourish most?

2

Map your exploration journey. What potential destinations for future career paths do you want to explore? Who can inform you about these destinations? How can you reach these destinations?

3

Write a travelogue of the discovered destinations. Which ones match the island areas where you are most empowered? What will be your final destination?

4

Conclusion

According to CEG experts and end-users, the design is proposed most effective when introduced in the deepening phase of the decision-making for a post-graduation career, being the first trimester of HAVO and VWO 5, as a component of the CEG plan as introduced by Qompas. The suggested implementation strategy is a semi-structured approach. This entails an introductory session and reflection moment facilitated by the school, coupled with autonomy for individual use in between these designated sessions. This implementation strategy aims to seamlessly integrate the iLAND toolkit into the existing educational framework, maximizing its impact on students' career decision-making journeys.

The developed iLAND toolkit presents an overall effective solution for elevating career education guidance (CEG). Its primary innovations lie in heightened engagingness, bridging the gap between self-awareness and

active ideation for career exploration opportunities, and facilitating structured reflection that effectively enhances comparability of insights. While effectively fostering collaboration by promoting autonomy and relatedness, an essential shift is foreseen, departing from mentor dependence to intrinsic motivation in career exploration and decision-making.

While the outcome may serve as a source of inspiration for future developments in the CEG domain, there is room for improvement in usability in the suggested design in terms of enhancing feedforward, addressing the need for clearer guidance and direction in user interactions. These refinements aim to elevate the overall user experience and further enhance the toolkit's effectiveness in guiding career decision-making.

Learning points

This project has significantly served as a validation of my vision on tangible and collaborative sense-making being applicable beyond the domain of design, in this case in the domain of education and personal development. For the future, I aim to explore in what other domains this vision can also be of value, while I believe that 'learning' extends beyond the traditional concept of classroom education, and is an ongoing process throughout life, executed every day.

Also, my beliefs of the cons of digitalization in society have been validated, while this project served as a good example of contexts where digitalization may not be beneficial, and rather a balance between traditional embodied approaches should be embraced for optimal effectiveness. This led to recognizing that my value as a designer is in enhancing UX/UI design for learning.

In addition, by employing business models early in the process, I was able to witness the value of this for guiding the design process validating design decisions, and communicating this to stakeholders. In terms of including stakeholders, I was able to step out of my comfort zone and be bold, resulting in experiencing the benefits of validating and co-creating designs for an ultimate user-centric result.

Along with my extensively broadened knowledge on product realization techniques within the domain of playful learning through the creation of a high fidelity prototype and the consideration of alternatives in terms of costs, user experience, and environmental impacts, I believe this project served as a wonderful validation of my vision and identity, giving rise to a domain of design which I wish to pursue and explore further, being able to identify the right learning opportunities in line with my vision and identity as a designer.