Peer-to-peer platform that bringing career clarity to students before they make their future choice

Design for Good

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Design for Good (DFG) is a global platform dedicated to mobilizing the power of design to address complex societal challenges, including climate action, equity, health, and humanitarian issues. Through its collaborative model, DFG brings together designers, researchers, and innovators from around the world to deliver high-impact solutions for social good.

At the Royal College of Art (RCA), I participated in the DFG x RCA collaboration, working to tackle real-world problems through systemic, human-centered design. Our work aligned with DFG’s global goals, focusing on designing scalable, sustainable interventions that create measurable impact. The experience emphasised cross-sector collaboration, ethical design practices, and actionable outcomes that serve communities worldwide.

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Career goal shapes education path

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In today's world, education is no longer just about learning; it’s tightly interwoven with preparing for work.
The path through school is often shaped by a career goal in mind, and higher education has become one of the biggest investments young people and their families make.

Yet ironically, one of the most crucial decisions , choosing a career direction, is expected to happen when students are still in high school, often with limited real-world experience.
They are asked to bet their time, money, and future on a direction they might not fully understand yet.

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As a result, many people end up changing their jobs later in life, sometimes switching industries entirely, often at the cost of new investments in time, money, and retraining.
For many, it becomes a cycle of "could have," "would have," and "should have."

The common root?
A lack of accessible, meaningful knowledge about careers at the stage when it matters most.

Understanding what different careers truly involve, beyond job titles and stereotypes is crucial, yet this kind of knowledge is often missing from traditional education systems.

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Understand the people

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To develop a deeper understanding of the problem, we conducted user research through a combination of interviews and surveys, reaching over 100 respondents across different backgrounds.
Our goal was to listen carefully to their experiences, frustrations, and wishes around career discovery during their school years.

The findings revealed a clear and consistent pattern.
Many students shared that they were expected to make life-shaping decisions at a very young age, often without enough real-world exposure to what different careers actually look like.
Their understanding of the working world was usually shaped by a narrow range of influences such as family expectations, conversations with school counselors, or random information found online.
Few had the opportunity to interact directly with people working in the fields they were interested in.
As a result, many felt that their choices were made in a fog of uncertainty, leading to decisions that later required correction through career switches, additional education, or new investments.

There was a strong sense that a more direct, authentic, and diverse exposure to real career experiences would have helped them make more informed and confident choices earlier on.
This highlighted a clear gap in the traditional education-to-career system that needed rethinking.

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Contextual Interview

We interviewed 5 professionals who have shifted their career, instead of high school students to understand how their careers evolved and what shaped their choices. Many were uncertain about their future in high school, and some pursued careers different from what they had imagined.

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Quantitative Survey

We surveyed 53 participants: 60% are working adults, mostly seeking career changes for financial growth, and 40% are master's students looking to expand job opportunities and knowledge. Over 80% define a job based on its tasks and responsibilities.

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Analysing the informations

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I developed a customer journey to better understand the experience of career decision-making from a student’s perspective.

Early career decisions are often made without clarity, agency, or real understanding, yet they shape a student’s life path for years to come. By the time students reconsider their direction, they have often already invested significant time and money into a path that may no longer fit who they are or what they want.

This gap between early decisions and later realization highlights the need for a better system, one that helps students explore, reflect, and understand before making high-stakes commitments.

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To further explore the ecosystem around students, I developed a stakeholder map.

One key insight was:
"Parents and the inner circle are key to how students discover their career paths."

Students often do not have direct connections to real-world professionals, relying mainly on their parents’ networks. When they do manage to connect, the view they receive is often one-dimensional, lacking the nuance, diversity, and real-world complexity that a career truly involves.

This limited exposure shapes how students imagine their futures, sometimes reinforcing narrow or outdated ideas about what is possible.

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Our survey revealed that even professionals have vastly different interpretations of the same job title, from daily tasks to team dynamics. This inconsistency leads to one-dimensional and often misleading advice for students, who are trying to make life-shaping decisions with incomplete information. Without a deeper, more nuanced understanding of what a career truly involves, students risk building their futures on assumptions rather than real insights.

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Key Insights

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Early decisions, little understanding

Students are asked to make career choices before they have any real exposure to what those careers involve. This early pressure shapes their education paths long before they are ready.

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Biased advice from a narrow circle

Most career advice comes from parents, teachers, or close family friends, offering a limited and sometimes outdated view of the working world.

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A mismatch with the future of work

Guidance often reflects the past, not the rapidly changing job market. Students rarely hear about emerging industries, new skills, or unconventional career paths.

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Education tied to career, but access is unequal

Higher education is increasingly framed as a career investment, but access to good advice and opportunities still depends heavily on background and privilege.

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No tools for early exploration

Students are expected to commit early, yet most lack the tools, experiences, or frameworks needed to explore their options thoughtfully and confidently.

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How might we help students surfaces the hidden dimensions of careers; the tasks, skills, and lived experiences, by connecting students with real professional stories, while also adapting to a future of work that is constantly evolving and deeply personal?

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Solution Development

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Theory of Change

To guide the development of our solution, we built a structured If–Then hypothesis stack.Starting from research insights, we mapped out the key barriers students face when making career decisions: limited exposure, biased advice, shallow exploration, and rigid expectations about career paths.We then translated each insight into a testable hypothesis, asking: "If we intervene at this point, what positive change could happen?"This process helped us break down a complex challenge into focused, actionable beliefs.

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To ensure our solution was grounded in a clear logic of change, we developed a Theory of Change.It maps how early, real-world career exposure, holistic reflection, and peer dialogue can empower students to make more informed, confident, and adaptable career decisions.This framework helped guide our design priorities, test our assumptions, and visualize the long-term impact we aim to create.

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Co-design workshop to validate the discovery mechanism

We discovered that career choices go far beyond simply following passion.
To make informed decisions, students need to consider vocational skills, economic realities, personal values, and self-awareness.

Drawing inspiration from frameworks like Ikigai, the Hedgehog Concept, and contemporary career development theories, we created a more nuanced model for career exploration.
Unlike traditional models that focus only on strengths and interests, our framework also introduced dimensions such as energy-draining sectors and future fears, helping students reflect on what might lead to burnout or long-term dissatisfaction.

We tested this evolved model through a peer-to-peer workshop with Master’s students in Service Design, a group familiar with uncertainty, fluid career paths, and the challenge of self-navigation.
The session encouraged students to move beyond isolated self-assessment, creating space for dialogue, shared experiences, and collective reflection. By navigating through each topic under the Ikigai Theory, the peers will help assess and describe what career they see fit for the participants.

The results revealed that holistic, socially-supported exploration can generate deeper and more grounded career insights.
Students reported feeling more confident, gaining clearer perspectives on their personal direction, and recognizing that career paths are not static choices but living journeys shaped by values, opportunities, and evolving interests.

This approach challenged the outdated idea that students must have a clear, linear path from a young age.

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Service Design Solution

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Expedify

A career discovery platform that helps students explore real-world roles through task-based reflection and personal preferences, while providing all-round perspectives from real practitioners and using a co-op model to maximize long-term student benefit.

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Mission

We empower students to explore future careers through task-based discovery, real practitioner insights, and a cooperative platform built to serve and grow with them.

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How it work

Our platform reimagines career discovery as an interactive, self-driven journey, blending structured self-reflection with AI-powered customisation.
Students begin by sharing inputs often overlooked in traditional career guidance: life goals, preferred workstyles, subject interests, and sector curiosity.
Rather than relying on static forms, the system uses AI to generate personalized tasks and mock interview prompts, encouraging deeper engagement and reflection.

These inputs are then matched against real-world data from professionals, HR sources, and education providers.
By integrating peer-to-peer professional insights, the platform aggregates multiple perspectives to create nuanced relevance scores for skills and tasks.

The result is a holistic, adaptive career exploration experience that gives students clarity, flexibility, and a grounded understanding of their future paths, far beyond what a traditional quiz could offer.

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AI Matching Engine

Students begin by entering inputs such as life goals, workstyle preferences, and subject interests. The platform generates task-based scenarios and mock interview questions to help students explore their preferences more concretely. These are matched against a career intelligence engine that pulls from:

Professional insights (job titles, skills, tasks, education, challenges)
HR databases
University and course listings

This results in personalised career matches with clear paths forward.

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Peer Insight Aggregation

To make career insights richer and less one-dimensional, the platform also incorporates perspectives from multiple professionals.Each professional rates task and skill relevance from their experience.Our AI aggregation model synthesises these ratings to produce collective relevance scores, giving students a realistic, nuanced view of what each career truly involves

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Venture Development

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To bring this project into the real world, we developed a cooperative-inspired business model that aligns with our mission: to make career discovery more inclusive, ethical, and grounded in student needs.

Unlike traditional EdTech models that prioritize scale and data extraction, this platform is co-owned by its users; students, schools, universities, and mentors, through a structure designed for shared governance, ethical AI use, and long-term sustainability.

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The business model outlines everything from the platform’s core purpose and key activities, to pricing strategy, economic and social performance, and a clear Exit-to-Community (E2C) roadmap.
The E2C plan ensures that the founder retains early-stage equity to guide development, but gradually transitions ownership to the user community, ensuring that the platform remains relevant, transparent, and mission-aligned as it scales.

This venture model turns the product into a sustainable service, and the community into its stewards.

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Exit-to-Community (E2C) Plan

Instead of aiming for a traditional exit through acquisition or IPO, we designed an Exit-to-Community (E2C) strategy to ensure long-term ownership by the very stakeholders the platform serves: schools, student councils, local councils, and founders.

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Year 1–2:
Founders retain 20% equity and operational control to lead product development, validate partnerships, and scale early pilots.

Year 3:
A transition advisory board forms, including representatives from schools, student councils, local councils, and founders.
This board co-develops governance principles, data ethics policies, and ownership structures.

Year 4–5:
Ownership is gradually redistributed trust agreements and community stewardship milestones.
Shared ownership includes:

Schools (institutional anchors)
Student councils (youth voice and relevance)
Local councils (public interest and regional equity)
Founders (capped advisory role)

Post-Exit:
The platform becomes a community-owned public-good infrastructure, with governance that is democratic, mission-aligned, and reinvested into expanding access and resilience.

To sustain operational excellence, a professional working team remains active, handling technical development, community management, research, and operations.
Additionally, students can intern within key departments (content localisation, community engagement, research, and tech support), helping adapt and localise the platform to their school while gaining real-world skills.

The E2C model ensures that the platform evolves with its users, stays resilient to external pressures, and continuously builds value for education and society.

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Paul P.

Peer-to-peer platform that bringing career clarity to students before they make their future choice

Year

2025

Role

Service Designer

Design at

Royal College of Art

For

Design for Good

Project Overview

Project Deepdive

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