The "IT Generation" project was launched by the Ukrainian government in July 2022 to provide new career opportunities for individuals who lost their jobs due to the Russian invasion. The project aimed to train 2000 people who had no prior experience in tech, with the possibility of expanding to 60,000 participants in various tech specialties. The initiative seeks to support people and contribute to Ukraine's tech sector and economy.
Note: In Ukraine, the terms "tech industry" and "IT industry" are synonymous and refer to the same sector, with "IT industry" being the more commonly utilized term.
The project received an overwhelming response, with over 210,000 applications from 48,000 people. One of the leading educational institutions tasked with selecting candidates faced a significant workload and customer support issues due to the large volume of applications. Despite this, this school selected its quota of 72 students from 16,000 applications and decided to conduct user research before the next launch of the project. Our team was tasked with this research.
As a UX researcher on a team of three, I contributed to various research activities such as creating a research strategy, conducting in-depth interviews (8 out of 15), and analyzing data. I helped to build behavioral audience segmentation and suggested metaphor-based titles to build deeper empathy for segments. I was responsible for creating a Customer Journey Map highlighting the most challenging steps and led a brainstorming workshop for the client. Throughout the study, I maintained close communication with the school committee, key stakeholders in the project, to ensure a successful outcome.
The stakeholders approached our team with the following questions:
The stakeholders were also concerned about the potential for participants to drop out if they realized they had made the wrong choice, potentially taking the place of a more motivated individual and wasting charitable funds. Additionally, as a private school for professional certification training, they aimed to convert the "IT Generation" participants into loyal and repeat customers of their regular paid services.
We transformed the stakeholders' input into a human-centered business goal:
"How can we assist IT Generation applicants in selecting a field of study so that as many people as possible can find employment and remain engaged with the school's ecosystem?"
To achieve this goal, we broke it down into subgoals and crafted research questions to answer these subgoals. The primary research questions were:
During our pilot interviews, we realized that the schools' communication during the selection stage was a major source of frustration for applicants, which seemed to be a common issue across all participating schools. Therefore, we added one more research question:
We discussed this with the stakeholders and they agreed to expand the timeline of our research to cover the entire process, from when the applicants heard about the IT Generation project to the moment they were either rejected or accepted to study.
For this research, we utilized one-on-one in-depth interviews to gain a thorough understanding of the audience. This method allowed us to dive deeper into their experiences, build empathy, and effectively address our research objectives.
We chose to conduct a total of 15 in-depth interviews, with a focus on gathering a diverse sample of IT-generation program participants. This included:
We utilized a database of IT-generation program participants who had applied to our client school to identify potential respondents. To ensure diversity in our sample, we proportionately selected a portion of the emails.
Then I developed a screener to sort respondents based on our recruiting criteria.
We employed a "waves" approach to send the screener, starting with a pilot group of 50 emails, then refining it and sending it to 200 more until we had found all the necessary applicants (which required approximately 500 total emails).
We created a structured guide to help us gather information to answer our research questions. After a pilot interview, we found that communication problems between schools and participants were a major issue, so we adjusted our strategy to include this aspect.
To minimize bias, most of the 15 interviews were conducted by two researchers, with me carrying out 8 of them. The interviews were completed over a two-week period.
We began by transcribing the interview data. Then, we created a diagram to gather quotes from all participants on the key questions of the study.
After analyzing these quotes, we found patterns in the responses and made conclusions on each research topic. These conclusions cover topics such as how the participants chose their field of study, what criteria they used to choose a school, and what issues they turned to support for. These key findings are reflected in our report.
The research aimed to segment the program's audience. Instead of using demographics, I searched for behavioral patterns. After experimenting with different grouping criteria, we found that motivation for participating and tech familiarity differentiated the audience best.
The motivations of the participants varied and included both a genuine interest in the tech industry and being forced to find something new due to job loss. Their experience also varied, from long-time tech enthusiasts to those who only considered it after joining the program. I combined these two factors to create archetypes and plotted them on a single axis.
I then re-analyzed the interviews and placed respondents on the axis to evaluate our approach's effectiveness and see if it accurately represents the audience.
I tested different names for the segments and axes, and thoroughly assessed if the respondent fit each segment accurately. After evaluating the data, we selected 4 segments.
I also suggested a metaphor to clarify the segments and created a visual representation to emphasize the differences between them and enhance empathy.
We also highlighted key features, motivations, previous experiences, decision-making criteria, and challenges for each segment.
The resulting metaphor helps to better understand the specifics of the respondents. We have a coastline (past experience), an ocean (what separates them from the future profession), an island with a lighthouse (a new profession in tech).
I wanted to highlight that different segments are in different circumstances and at different distances from the goal.
Those who "Fighting to Keep Afloat" are the furthest from the island, and were like "thrown off the cliff". They were suddenly and without preparation forced to change careers due to the loss of their previous jobs resulting from Russia's invasion.
Those who 'got their feet wet" are in more comfortable conditions, symbolized by a beach on the map and a shallow area, as they have been exploring the direction of tech for some time.
And so on for the next segments. I disclosed these archetypes in more detail in the report to the client.
The next component of our research was the customer journey map (CJM). We charted the paths of the participants based on the 4 segments we identified.
Typically, CJMs should be created individually for each archetype. However, we observed that the CJMs for our archetypes shared many similarities, with only a few differences. As a result, we concluded that separate CJMs for each archetype would not be user-friendly for our client and could cause confusion.
Hence, I deviated from the conventional format and created our own, tailored to our specific case. We emphasized the steps that varied between segments, and these were depicted separately for each segment. Steps that were common to all participants were not segmented.
For each stage of the program, we outlined the actions taken by the participant, their needs, pain points, and emotions at each stage.
In the report, we went into further detail on the stages where participants had the most negative experiences. We aimed to uncover the reasons for their dissatisfaction and identify the most common issues faced by participants during the program.
Initially, we expected that choosing a direction would pose a challenge for the participants. However, our assumptions were challenged as we progressed through half of the interviews and the open-ended questions in the screener. The participants brought to light unexpected difficulties, such as communication issues between schools and lack of feedback on test tasks.
In response, we adapted the guide to include these concerns and altered our sampling approach to gather experiences from participants who attended different schools. While the sample size was not enough for a full analysis of competitors, we carefully reviewed the previous and new interviews to identify information related to schools' communication with participants.
Our research partially disproved the hypothesis that members of the IT generation need help in choosing a direction. We found that only one segment of the audience out of four needed help. Surprisingly, they coped well with the help of Google and their support network. However, our research revealed the needs of this segment, and the process of participating in the program could be made easier for them.
We also uncovered a remarkable problem: communication with schools was a major source of frustration for program participants. We compiled the most pressing examples and shared them with the school. Additionally, we collected best practices and positive experiences in communication, as well as negative experiences to avoid.
Finally, we found that some of the respondents became so interested in the IT industry through the program that they are willing to pay for further study, even if they do not receive a grant. This highlights the importance of effective communication with each audience segment, taking into account their unique needs and challenges, in order to convert program participants into paying customers.
We went beyond delivering the research results to the client and proposed a workshop. Our goal was to translate the findings into actionable business decisions, together with the client.
The client selected the most pressing issue they wanted to address using the research outcomes.
I prepared the workshop plan based on the insights gained from the research. During the workshop, we worked together to develop a CJM (Customer Journey Map) for the most promising idea. The client received fresh solutions that they can implement in their future operations.
The research is already proving beneficial even before the next IT generation launch is announced. The majority of students currently enroll in beginner courses at the client school, and the developed audience segments were found to be applicable not just to the IT generation program, but to the institute as a whole.
The school has also stepped up their efforts in working with the career service and career guidance, relying on the results of the research.
During our research, we used multiple methods of triangulation, including combining survey data and in-depth interviews, and considering different perspectives from program participants and support representatives. However, limited time meant that the researcher conducting the interviews also analyzed the results.
Later on, we revisited the transcriptions and recordings of interviews conducted by other colleagues and found that this provided a more comprehensive and objective understanding. In future studies, we plan to incorporate triangulation by researcher to further improve our findings.
I played an active role in creating a behavioral segmentation of program participants and identifying their main pain points. To add a touch of empathy, I put our segmentation into the metaphorical world. Additionally, I contributed to the development of a customer journey map for each segment, highlighting their most challenging steps. I also prepared practices for a workshop to generate solutions based on our research.
The client already benefited from the research as they were able to refine the student experience by addressing the pain points and challenges we had identified.
The close collaboration with stakeholders in this study was a key factor in its success. By sharing intermediate results in a timely manner and being able to adjust the strategy during the field work, we were able to obtain more valuable and impactful findings.
Sneak peeks to some of my other works:
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