Kaizen

Inspiration

When approaching this prompt, I immediately thought about where I felt I was "in-between" in my life and what change I'd want to see. I immediately saw my struggles with internship applications as an opportunity for change. Later in the creation of my app, I was inspired by the Japanese philosophy of "Kaizen" which essentially means "change for the better" or "continuous improvement". That became the name for my brand and the philosophy it follows: Small Steps. Continuous Progress.

What it does

Kaizen is a career transition companion for students that are trying to navigate the internship in-between: that uncomfortable space between applying and hearing back, where the student's effort is visible but the reciprocal validation is not. Kaizen is an app designed to help users complete one meaningful daily action towards the future of their career, whether it's refining one bullet on their resume, developing one part of their portfolio, applying to one more internship application, etc. This is helps track students' daily effort and restore perceived control and relieve anxiety over their forward momentum.

How I built it

I built the entire prototype in Figma, utilizing my findings from primary and secondary research to fuel my design decisions. I began with creating my design system and then immediately went into the design for the dashboard/homepage of the app. From there I created iconography that I felt was necessary like the check marks, the icons for the navbar, etc. and finally I created the onboarding screens for when users first open the app.

Challenges I ran into

The main challenge I faced primarily was making sure that Kaizen wasn't just another to-do list. When I first envisioned the app, my mind immediately drifted to it just being another task manager, but that didn't achieve what I wanted the app's purpose to be. After careful consideration, I differentiated between my app from any other task-manager or LinkedIn type app. My app is designed to help with the user's forward momentum in their career by motivating them to keep pushing towards their future with small daily tasks. The real problem wasn't task organization, it was the loss of users' visible momentum. I had to solve for psychological stability on top of efficiency.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud that the app feels cohesive, that each part of the app works together towards a purpose that is connected around the same philosophy. Kaizen, the concept of doing at least one positive action towards one's future, features a calendar and daily action suggestion along with a planner to maintain organization and a community to promote positive reinforcement. The name, the tagline, the purpose, the execution, all flows towards one cohesive center.

What I learned

The primary thing I learned was how much harder it is to design for emotion rather than function. It's easy to build features like a home button or a calendar, but making it all work together so that it translates into a psychological helping tool for users' anxiety and motivation with restrained and intentional UI was much more challenging.

What's next for Kaizen

Right now, Kaizen's main purpose is to orient its users psychologically in the right direction. Moving forward, it could adapt its suggested actions based on the user's time availability, where the user is in the recruiting process, or maybe give higher or lower energy tasks for different users' needs.

Built With

• figma