URA CARD GAME: CAREER AWARENESS AMONG CHILDREN TO UNDERSTAND CAREER OPTIONS IN A FUN WAY AND MAKE INFORMED CAREER CHOICES

Abstract
It is a common scenario in India as well as in other countries, that many students spend several years of their academic life either disinterested in their chosen field of study or are unemployed in large numbers once they graduate thereafter. When this situation was analyzed, it was found that most students did not make a choice of their own to enter the area of study they are pursuing. Further delving into this issue revealed that neither students nor their parents who often were the decision makers regarding their children’s academic and career pursuits, were well informed about career choices. People were generally familiar with the two most common career paths: Engineer and Doctor. Other careers are hardly known or considered to be of value by the majority. This is a huge lacuna. Most, who chose careers other than these two common career paths, got to know about these career streams from their relatives, friends, counselling centers, internet and other sources. This imbalance in awareness is increasingly resulting in a large number of talented and passionate workforce being in the wrong place. It thus makes for a less than optimum situation both for the employee to give his best in his work and also for the employer to get quality work from their employees.

This paper describes how this unique issue was tackled and converged into a solution, after gathering data from target users, using various design research methods. It led to the design of 'URA career play cards' (URA in Finnish means 'Career'), a game which helps children at an early age (7 to 15 years) become aware about the existence of various careers, so they can make an informed career choice later in life. This product has been designed with much detail following a user-centered design approach, involving users throughout the design process. The product has been tested with an initial pilot group of children of the age group of 7 to 15 and has been found effective as per the feedback from users. And further, an international career counselling organization is looking to take this product to market.