Making career exploration and postsecondary planning simple, personalized, and accessible.
Utilizing AI to transform the College, Career, and Life Readiness (CCLR) process for high school students by recommending college and career opportunities based off assessments, grades, trends, and more.
TL;DR
Problem
Students struggle with informed college and career decisions due to the confusing and overwhelming amount of information available. Additionally, school counselors often face high student-to-counselor ratios, making it difficult to provide personalized guidance to every student in a timely manner.
Solution
An AI-driven tool designed to assist students with career exploration, college matching, and application guidance. It provides a user-friendly conversational interface that offers personalized recommendations, insights into job demand, salaries, and postsecondary plans.
How it got done
Our AI tool leverages national data sets and student data from assessments, classwork, and counselor notes to empower students with crucial decision-making information. It allows students to explore career options, find college matches, and receive application support efficiently, ultimately optimizing counselor time while ensuring students receive the guidance they need.
36% of high school students in the US rely on Naviance CCLR for college research, career exploration, and future planning
Team
Lead product manager
Lead UX designer (me!)
UX writers
UX researchers
Leadership - for approval
Tools
Figma - UX design
Miro + Lucidspark - Ideation
Dovetail - UX research and documentation
Jira
Timeline
Fall 2024 - Present
Overview
Students often struggle to imagine their future beyond high school. Many aren’t sure which careers fit their interests or how to connect those aspirations to practical steps like selecting classes, applying to colleges, or finding scholarships.
Our goal was to personalize the college and career exploration experience using AI-driven recommendations and intuitive design, helping students discover their best-fit paths — while giving counselors tools to guide them efficiently.
The Challenge
Despite having access to extensive data about careers and colleges, students were overwhelmed and disengaged. Focus groups and interviews revealed:
Many didn’t know what careers interested them or where to start.
They wanted to understand what day-to-day life looks like in a given career.
Students valued actionable guidance — such as what high school classes to take, what colleges offer related majors, and which scholarships fit their background.
Counselors wanted a single, unified view to support personalized recommendations at scale.
The existing experience presented too much information with little personalization or context — creating friction at the very start of the exploration journey.
Research & Insights
To ground the redesign, we conducted:
5 counselor focus groups across multiple districts
9 student interviews from varying backgrounds and aspirations
Surveys with over 200 students using our existing platform
Key Insights:
Students want guidance, not options overload. They trust curated suggestions when context is provided.
Visual and narrative content — like career overview videos — make information more relatable and easier to remember.
Counselors prefer flexible, scalable tools that align with district goals and can incorporate their own local content.
Students are motivated by connection and progression: understanding what to do today to move closer to their future goal.
Ideation & Design Exploration
I led cross-functional design workshops to reimagine the exploration journey from both the student and counselor perspectives.
We mapped user flows for discovery → reflection → action, then created prototypes emphasizing clarity, motivation, and feedback.
I tested multiple approaches to surface recommendations — balancing AI transparency with user trust.
Early prototypes validated the concept of career “starter” cards that highlight practical next steps, such as:
“Take AP Biology next year to prepare for a Health Science path”
“Explore Nursing majors at nearby colleges”
“Watch a day-in-the-life video of a Radiology Technician”
Final Design Solutions
AI-Powered Career Profiles
Curated recommendations based on interests, assessments, and academic data.
Added career overview videos integrating Roadtrip Nation experiences and proprietary labor data.
Each profile highlights day-to-day tasks, related high school courses, and best-fit majors — bridging exploration and action.
Personalized College Profiles
AI tools filter colleges based on each student’s preferences and fit.
Simplified data visualization and comparison tools make information easier to digest.
Added new “Student Fit” insights connecting interests, cost, and outcomes.
PowerBuddy for College & Career
Enhanced our conversational AI assistant to offer personalized scholarship matching and district-specific guidance.
Improved clarity around AI interactions to build user trust.
Success Planner & College Application Tools
Integrated Success Planner to track all post-secondary pathways (college, trades, military, workforce).
Introduced Unofficial Transcript access and Outside Letter of Recommendation requests, streamlining the application process.
AI-powered PowerBuddy for college and career support
Support students in career and college exploration with a conversational AI assistant
Allows students to get relevant insights, answers, and information from industry- recognized and trusted data sources
Answers questions about colleges, careers, majors, and more.
AI generated videos for career information consumption
Designed to introduce students to every career we have in Naviance.
On every career profile page, students can access a 2–3-minute career overview video.
Videos will include important career information, such as skills and education requirements, average salary, and what students can do to learn more.
Reflection
This project reinforced the importance of personalization with transparency. Students embraced AI-driven suggestions when they understood why those suggestions were made.
From a design systems perspective, this initiative also laid the groundwork for scalable personalization — enabling consistent, modular components that can be adapted across new products.
Next steps include deeper integration of AI explainability and further personalization of counselor dashboards to measure student progress more effectively.
More to come!
In the meantime, reach out to me and I would love to go into these projects in more depth, including my role, my process, challenges faced, research done, impact, and so much more!