This article was originally published in Swinburne University of Technology’s Design News – a platform celebrating design and innovation across Swinburne’s School of Design. Discover the latest design news about Swinburne’s research, teaching and student success stories.

SEEK is partnering with Design Factory Melbourne in an Innovation Challenge Project. As a leading online job classifieds platform, SEEK is looking to expand from being a place where people look for a job, to being a provider of support for people over the course of their career journey. They are aiming to create a product or service that helps people to find their calling and take actionable steps to progress their career.

SEEK has service products aimed at supporting job seekers over their career pathways such as online career advice content. They are looking to extend this to help people who are struggling to identify what pathways to take and where to start.

The Innovation Challenge Project, is the final unit of the Innovation Minor, a course of study available to undergraduate students across Swinburne that are embedded within their core degree. During the Innovation Challenge Project, students are using design and innovation approaches to find solution concepts for SEEK. They are following a design thinking approach over the course of a twelve-week semester.

“Students will engage in user and background research to understand SEEK’s prospective customers and their needs. They will explore and prototype solutions. They will test these with users to evaluate efficacy in addressing needs. Along with human desirability features, students also assess viability and feasibility to justify their final concept,” says Dr Clementine Thurgood, Coordinator of the Innovation Minor at Design Factory Melbourne.

The Innovation Challenge Project phases are iterative. Students consider and test different ideas before arriving at a final concept. SEEK is constantly involved, providing feedback on the ideas.

John Carroll, Product Manager, Career Guide at SEEK demonstrated the new Career Guide to kickstart the Innovation Challenge at Design Factory Melbourne.

“We’re extremely excited to be working with Design Factory Melbourne students this semester. The problem we’ve set them is an issue that every person goes through a number of times in their lives. The opportunity to help these people to navigate the complex space of a career journey is huge,” says Mr Carroll.

The new Career Guide will be designed for ‘Young starters’ or 16-18 year olds; high school students and school leavers. And Fresh starters’, 18-24 year olds; young adults with some work experience.

“Over the semester, each group will test out different possibilities and solution concepts. They will iterate their ideas, taking on feedback from end-users, until they find a concept that they believe will most address the problems,” explains Dr Thurgood.

Four teams of business, engineering and design students are focusing user research on ‘Fresh starters’. Each team is presenting prototyped solution concepts – physical and/or digital that communicate what the solution hopes to achieve for SEEK.

The outcomes of extensive background and user research, documentation of prototyping, and justification for the final concept are formalised in written reports, oral presentations and a short video.