My Captain
The Challenge /
How might we leverage technology to make career decisions and learning an enjoyable and motivational process for students while retaining the human value of connection.
My Experience /
We co-founded MyCaptain in 2015 when we were fresh out of college and had no clue what we were getting ourselves into. Initially, at our 5-people startup everyone was helping make design decisions. There were no boundaries and we had an extremely fluid team structure. This led me to play multiple design roles which included creating the brand from ground up, designing the company's first office space, helping design and execute the marketing strategies and campaigns all the while working on the product design. At this stage one of the major learning for me was making peace with delivering good but not perfect work because of the time and resource constraints. As the team grew we gradually set structures and processes and defined roles. As the design lead, I sat with the product head to discuss product strategy, new features and review user feedback. I also worked with the marketing head to discuss the marketing strategies and ideate campaigns to meet their targets. My role evolved from working directly on the design to delegating tasks to my team and managing them.
This case study highlights how we made use of various business and design tools to understand the users, understand the problem we set out to solve and move our business forward. It also showcases our brand strategy and a few of our marketing campaigns.
To view the product design case study click here.
Year /
2015 - 2020
Role /
Co-Founder
Creative Direction
Systems Thinking
Team /
Fatema Hussain
Sameer Ramesh
Mohammed Zeeshan
Ruhan Madni Naqash
Asad Dhamani
MyCaptain has impacted 100,000+ aspiring artists, designers, technologists, scientists & entrepreneurs by providing a platform to inspire and get inspired through exploration and collaboration.
Solution Overview /
An online platform that helps students take the first step in their field of passion with the help of young achievers, mentors and guides. The mentors(called Captains) are under the age of 25 and have recently gone through the same journey that these students wish to undertake hence making it easier for the students to connect to them. They are published authors, young entrepreneurs, investors, film makers, journalists, designers, developers etc. Furthermore, exploring career options is made exciting by incorporating curated and gamified content accompanied by tasks that the students can go through at their own pace.
The name 'MyCaptain' is inspired by the character of John Keating from the movie - The Dead Poets Society and the poems O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman. The logo signifies a revolution in the education sector with a hand signal that is also meant as a salute to the mentors.
Live Mentorship
A personal mentor to guide and motivate the students
Online
Removing physical boundaries to make learning from anywhere possible
Project Based
Task based learning to help cater to different types of learning styles
Networking & Community
Internships, guided projects and networking opportunities
Engaging Content
Relevant and gamified content to prevent exhaustion from information overload
The Process /
Execute
Observe
Design
Prototype
- Marketing Campaigns
- Ops Model Execution
- Product Rollout
- Trend Analysis
- Stakeholder Map
- Competitive Study
- Qualitative Interviews
- Persona Mapping
- Business Model Canvas
- Market Opportunity
- Ideation
- Branding
- MVP
- User Journey
Research & Analysis /
We spoke to 100+ students, parents and teachers to understand their views on learning and the education system. Following are some of the insights we gathered.
Lack of information for choosing careers
Students value personal interactions & are looking for mentorship & guidance
Teachers
Students
Parents
Schools
Peers
Universities
Career Counsellors
Employers
Stakeholder map
Young people are looking for certificates & experiences to put on their resumes.
Young people are eager to learn by doing
Live
Market
opportunity
Academic
Upskilling/
Vocational
Recorded
Market Opportunity
The Outcome /
My Captain is a youth mentoring initiative, where young graduate students with outstanding achievements and experiences connect with young students who wish to follow a similar path.
Our vision to help students explore and pursue their passions led to the idea of connecting students to mentors who can guide them towards their goal. Based on our research we realised that having young mentors who had just gone through what the students were facing was the way to go.
To prototype the idea we pushed out an MVP by connecting small groups of students to a young achiever on a Whatsapp group. The mentor would conduct regular sessions on the Whatsapp groups and assign tasks. Based on the learning from the MVP we studied the market, detailed out the business model and created user journeys to define the product. My role ranged from creating the visual language to helping design the course structure for the workshops.
Screenshots from one of our very first workshops on Whatsapp
Lean Business Canvas Model
Problem
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Most students are not clear on what career they wish to take up.
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Students who are sure about what they want to pursue do not have enough information or guidance to take the first step.
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There is no single platform to explore and experience different career paths.
Solutions
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Live and interactive learning sessions with young professionals as mentors.
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Task based learning with guided projects and internship opportunities.
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Engaging content to enable exploration.
Unique Value Propositions
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Live and personal delivery of the workshops by young achievers who can form strong bonds with the students.
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Gamified and interactive learning.
Unfair Advantage
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Early mover advantage being one of the first in alternate career space.
Customer Segments
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People between the age of 14-24 years primarily from tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
Key Metrics
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Number of paid customers
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Number of courses
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Number of mentors
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Revenue
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Completion rates
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Net Promoter Score(NPS)
Channels
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On-ground operations like campus ambassadors.
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B2B2C deals with colleges and universities.
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Online advertising for lead generation.
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Sales partners.
Cost Structure
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Mentor compensation
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Operation expenses
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Technology expenses
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Rent & office expenses
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Marketing expenses
Revenue Streams
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Subscription fee
Mentee User Flow Visualisation
Loyalty
Suggested by peers
Awareness
Consideration
Purchase
Service
Takes a demo workshop
Pitched by the sales team
Watches an advertisement
Visits Website
Calls customer support for details
Downloads the MyCaptain App
Comes back to apply as a mentor
Not interested/ Bounces off
Explores other offerings
Pays for a workshop/ workshop bundle online
Pays for a workshop/ workshop bundle offline
Schedules Workshops
Attends live discussions
Completes Tasks and goes through reading material
Unlocks certificate
Explores Internship opportunities
Captain User Flow Visualisation
Referred by existing mentors
Rewards
Awareness
Consideration
Selection
Service
Through Partner companies/ organisations
Receives a certificate
Watches an advertisement
Visits Website
Downloads App
Fills out application
Signs the MOU
Attends induction and training sessions
Updates Schedule
Conducts Discussions
Reviews Tasks
Receives a stipend
Branding /
We visualised MyCaptain as a friendly college senior, guiding and helping you by sharing experiences and connecting you with the relevant resources.
As a bunch of twenty-somethings we were passionate about revolutionising the education system. We wanted MyCaptain to say that it was always there to support the problems students faced with respect to choosing their careers. A branding exercise that I'm fond of is visualising the brand as a person and then to bring that personality on paper through visuals and language. We visualised MyCaptain as a friendly college senior, guiding and helping you by sharing experiences and connecting you with the relevant resources.
Since our primary target audience is 14-24 year olds from tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 cities we knew that we needed to follow digital trends on social media and our app to remain relevant and compete with distractions. This required our visual language to be dynamic yet have a strong recall value.
We experimented with various styles for the visual identity and finalised on a simple iconic hand gesture with a twist. A hand gesture used to signify going against the norms adapted as a salute to the captains(mentors) who help us grow.
Primary Logo Lockup
Personality
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Honest
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Empowering
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Passion driven
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Social
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Welcoming
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Ambitious
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Fresh
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Charismatic
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Energetic
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Young
Tone
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Invigorating
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Simple
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Confidence Inducing
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Understanding
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Fresh
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Quirky
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Conversational
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Engaging.
Logo Explorations
Website /
An SEO friendly website where each of the workshop pages acts as their own homepage giving out all the details for the workshop and directing the user towards the payment. To know more visit www.mycaptain.in
Marketing Campaigns /
We have designed and implemented multiple campaigns targeting the mentees as well as the captains(mentors) over the years. This campaign primarily targeting the captains is one of favourite. We created trump cards for each of our captains which they could upload on their social media profiles. We even gave them customised t-shirts. The aim of the campaign was to make the captains feel proud of their work and inspire more people in their network to apply as captains.
Recognition /
MyCaptain was featured in the The Youth Solutions Report, a flagship initiative managed by the Youth Solutions Program of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The report features 50 game-changing projects led by young people, allowing them to showcase their work, and presenting them with opportunities to draw interest from potential supporters.
View the report here : http://www.youthsolutions.report/the-report
