We wanted to design a digital experience that helped budget-conscious people "expand their horizons." Discovering and learning new activities from the numerous and disparate online sources often overwhelms people. Wouldn't it be better to gather together these various resources into one place in order to better guide exploration, as well as offer assistance with goal-setting, tasks, and reminders?

Rethink

Initially, we intended to focus on people having difficulty finding new interests outside of their work. But our interviews uncovered a surprising subset of people who were attempting a career change on their own. They knew what interested them but they were getting overwhelmed by information overload. It became clear we also needed to consider options for structured learning.

Result

Horizon prioritizes ways to discover interests based on inputs and app exploration. For those who are consumed by indecisiveness, users can even let Horizon make decisions for them. Once an interest is chosen, the app can then help set goals, structure tasks into manageable chunks that build on one-another, send reminders, and provide motivation and positive feedback.

It wasn't simply that most interviewees reported feeling "stuck"; it was also the fact that they exhibited feelings of embarrassment and shame as they admitted to spending their spare time simply watching and listening to various media.

While they responded positively to the concept of "trying something new," nobody knew where to begin since none of them were sure what they were interested in doing... well, none of them except for the "Winnies."

Winnie was a resulting amalgamation of unexpected interviewees that appeared to be vastly different from the other people we spoke with. In the middle of a career change, the Winnies already knew what they wanted to do and were attempting to use free online resources to learn on their own.

At first, we debated disregarding the Winnies since they didn't appear to fit the patterns we were seeing with the other interviewees. But the more I explored the resulting interview data, the more I began to see a shared problem: both groups felt overwhelmed by what was out there.

Consequently, I was able to identify and coalesce sets of needs into two distinct personas that could help guide the team during prototype-building.

While the XR prototype did prove helpful in getting users to focus on the physical task, I learned an important lesson during the first two tests.

I was simulating an A.I. assistant that was supposed to help users with their assigned tasks. Helpful, right? Our users didn't think so. Every one of them readily voiced their irritation about being interrupted. It "was distracting", "broke the flow", and "needed to shut up; I can figure it out on my own!”

So, like the Clippy of yore, we "shut up" the A.I. assistant and gave later users more agency over its activation.

Users Liked

• small steps building on previous steps.

• “Learning Suggestions” that pique curiosity.

• positive feedback and affirmations.

But...

• confused if touch or voice activated.

• disliked intrusive AI.

• wanted to save & share.

• desired more control.

Our testing had worked thus far because we had narrowed down user options to a single interest and task. While the data we collected helped us better understand the need for a perceived sense of control and autonomy, we realized the XR was getting in the way of testing other relevant user needs related to general exploration and discovery.

Usability testing for this app-based prototype revealed more discernible outcomes, showing that assigned tasks could be more effortlessly completed even though there remained confusion around some nomenclature.

Users Liked

• the familiarity of Discover screen.

• the concept/look of Darkside feature.

• the horizontal scrolling.

But...

• wanted to customize profile/interests.

• confused by Darkside toggle.

• wanted to share via social media.