Google UX Cert capstone

DevTective

DevTective is a gamified coding education app and website that helps learners build real HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills by treating every bug as a case to investigate and solve. The concept responds to a familiar outcome: 5–15% of people who start a free coding course never finish it.

Role: Solo UX Designer
Team: Solo project
Scope: Certificate capstone
Tools: Figma, FigJam

01 — The problem

Momentum, not motivation, is the gap

Most dropout analysis treats this as a motivation problem. Interviewing early-stage coders surfaced a more fixable gap: people didn't quit because they stopped caring — they quit after a gap of a few days left them unsure where they'd left off and what "picking back up" even meant.

02 — Research → decision → evaluation

Designing for re-entry, not just progress

We learned The hardest moment wasn't lesson 1 — it was the second session, after a gap, when a learner had to reconstruct context before they could do anything.

So I changed I designed the home screen around a single "pick up where you left off" entry point with a short context recap, instead of a generic course-list home — and wireframed progress states that show streaks honestly, without guilt-driven red/warning styling.

Evaluated via Low-fidelity prototype walkthroughs checking whether a returning user could state what they'd do next within the first screen, with no explanation needed.

03 — Outcome

A concept built to be tested

As a certificate capstone, DevTective's deliverable is the research-to-wireframe process itself: a documented problem statement, a re-entry-first IA, and wireframes ready for usability testing — the exact workflow I'm now applying on paid internship work.