A Hackthon Project

CICan Navigator: Designing for Accessibility and Inclusive User Experience

COMPANY

CICAN

ROLE

UX Designer

EXPERTISE

UX/UI Design

YEAR

2025

Project Overview

I helped redesign the CICan Navigator during a 48-hour hackathon, making it more accessible and user-friendly for Canadians with diverse needs. Our team focused on simplifying workflows and improving assistive technology support, resulting in a more inclusive and intuitive career guidance tool.

Project description

The CICan Navigator project presented a unique opportunity to improve a digital career guidance tool aimed at helping Canadians across diverse backgrounds navigate educational pathways and career transitions. Our team, "Access Granted," tackled the challenge of enhancing usability and ensuring equitable access for users with varying digital literacy and accessibility needs. This case study outlines our approach, methodology, and solutions developed during an intensive hackathon experience.

Hackathon Overview
The CICan Navigator is a digital tool designed by Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan) to help Canadians make informed career decisions by leveraging up-skilling opportunities available through their coast-to-coast network of 135 member institutions. The tool's primary function is to help learners identify relevant learning and work opportunities while personalizing information based on their unique profiles, backgrounds, and geographical regions

Background
With over 95% of Canadians living within 50km of a college or institute, this tool had the potential to democratize access to educational resources and career guidance. However, the existing interface presented usability challenges for users with diverse needs and varying levels of digital literacy

Challenge
Our team selected the prompt: "How might we improve the usability and ensure equitable access to the tool for learners with diverse digital skills and accessibility needs?" This challenge required us to redesign key aspects of the platform to make it more intuitive, accessible, and valuable for all users, regardless of their abilities or technical experience.

Process

Our approach was anchored in established UX design principles and accessibility standards and began by examining user demographics and accessibility needs through detailed persona analysis

We consulted:

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for fundamental accessibility requirements
Nielsen Norman Group's ten usability heuristics for interface design evaluation
Human-centered design methodologies to ensure our solutions prioritized real user needs

This foundation of research enabled me to develop evidence-based solutions that would meaningfully address the accessibility and usability challenges.

Key Insights and Design Principles
Our research and analysis led us to several critical insights that guided our redesign:

Visual Design Optimization: The existing interface needed enhanced color contrast, more intuitive iconography, and improved data visualization to support users with visual impairments and those with varying levels of digital literacy

Cognitive Load Reduction: We identified opportunities to simplify complex workflows and reorganize information architecture to reduce cognitive demands on users

Assistive Technology Compatibility: The platform required improved screen reader compatibility and keyboard navigation to support users relying on assistive technologies

Contextual Usability: Features needed to be aligned with user mental models and typical task flows to create intuitive experiences

Responsive Design: The solution needed to work across various devices and connection speeds, particularly for users in remote areas with connectivity challenges