Massachusetts Academics to Careers Helper (MATCH): Helping Students Navigate Education to Career Paths
Timeline: July – December 2024
Role: Product Developer, Designer, User Researcher, Project Manager
Type: Generative AI Chatbot
The Challenge
Every year, over 25,000 high school seniors in Massachusetts face a fragmented and overwhelming college and career planning process. Existing tools offer scattered information, making it difficult for students—especially those from underserved communities—to understand how their education connects to real career opportunities. MATCH (Massachusetts Academics to Careers Helper) was built to change that. Our goal: to create an AI-powered platform that makes career exploration intuitive, personalized, and accessible.
The Team and My Role
MATCH was developed in collaboration with Northeastern’s Burnes Center for Social Change AI for Impact co-op and the Massachusetts Executive Office of Education. As a product designer and developer, I worked alongside another Northeastern student in the co-op to refine the platform’s experience, ensuring students could navigate it seamlessly. My role and responsibilities spanned:
User Research – Understanding how students explore careers and where they struggle.
Interface & Experience Design – Creating an intuitive, guided experience from the landing page to the chat page.
Project Management – Facilitating external communication via email, meetings, and pitch presentations.
Understanding the Students
To design a solution that truly met student needs, I conducted in-depth research:
User Interviews: I spoke with high school seniors, guidance counselors, and admissions officers to understand their pain points of the college research process. Additionally, I spoke with current students at Roxbury Community College about their experience.
Market & Tech Analysis: I studied existing career navigation tools, such as the College Board, and labor market trends to identify gaps.
Accessibility Insights: I explored how multilingual support could improve access for students and families across Massachusetts.
“I really try to make them do the work, but I’m sitting next to them pointing at the screen to help them navigate.”
“I couldn’t find anything that helped me [. . .] with choosing a major based on a career [. . .] [RCC] was right here so I applied”
Key Findings/Pain Points
From the research, four major challenges emerged:
Information Overload – Students were lost in a sea of scattered college and career resources.
Lack of Personalization – Existing tools didn’t tailor recommendations to students’ actual skills and interests.
Language Barriers – Non-English-speaking families struggled to access important information.
Limited Transparency – Students had little visibility into how educational choices translated into successful career opportunities.
Problem statement:
Prospective students are overwhelmed with the college research process’s fragmented information and lack of multilingual accessibility, leading to missed opportunities and unmet career goals.
This problem affects all career-motivated students exploring public higher education in Massachusetts, including over 25,000 high school seniors that make up half of that population, but it's particularly challenging for ESL students (10% of public high schoolers), first-generation students, and those with limited research support.
Building MATCH: Features and Design Decisions
To address this problem, we designed MATCH, an AI chatbot that helps students research courses and programs and understand their career connections. Using data from partner institutions, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Occupational Information Network, MATCH provides accurate insights.
To narrow the scope of the problem and for our project’s short timeframe, we focused on career pathways. According to a 2023 Strada Institute report, out of the 74% of students who pursue community college with career motivations, only 49% of these students actually achieved their career goals. Furthermore, MATCH focuses on high-demand subject areas prioritized by the governor to maximize impact: life sciences, climate technology, and applied AI.
Currently, we’re partnered with three of Massachusetts’ 24 public higher education institutions—Bridgewater State University, Worcester State University, and Greenfield Community College.
This proof-of-concept version of MATCH demonstrates its value before scaling to all public higher education institutions in the state.
Students can explore careers, learning about daily tasks, required skills, job outlook, and earning potential. Key features of MATCH include:
Conversational AI Chatbot – Uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to deliver personalized, real-time career guidance.
Multilingual Support – Integrated AWS Translate enables interaction in 75 languages.
User-Friendly Interface – A step-by-step landing page that makes career exploration feel guided and approachable.
Admin Tools for Continuous Improvement – Data View, User Feedback, and LLM Evaluation Pages to enhance chatbot accuracy and responsiveness.
MATCH Centralizes and Simplifies the Research Process
MATCH allows prospective students to conduct research in one place, citing its sources for further clarity, and without complicated site navigation. By putting information from all partnering institutions and career data sources in one place with an intuitive chat interface, we can help address how students are overwhelmed with disparate information and complex site navigation.
MATCH also has multilingual support, allowing prospective students to ask questions and receive answers in their native language. This is specifically inclusive of MA predominant secondary languages of Spanish, Haitian Creole, Chinese, and Portuguese, but it includes 72 other languages, minimizing language barriers to the research process.
Additionally, MATCH has helpful instructions, prompting tips, and sample questions prospective students can view to help them get started. This helps to address students being overwhelmed with the research process by clearly explaining and even showing how best to engage with MATCH.
Results and Next Steps
The final prototype of MATCH was pitched to our partners at the Executive Office of Education, members of the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security, the Operational Services Division, and MassHealth, Secretary and Commonwealth Chief Information Officer, Jason Snyder and his team, and Governor Maura Healey. The future of MATCH is to be determined by the Executive Office of Education and the Department of Higher Education, since our handoff late December 2024. Future work includes:
User Testing with High Schools and Institutions
Engage students, guidance counselors, and administrators across Massachusetts to refine MATCH based on real-world interactions.
Key testing goals include:
Evaluating the chatbot’s usability and relevance for diverse audiences.
Refining outputs for accuracy and alignment with student needs.
Expanding MATCH’s Scope
Institutional Partnerships: Integrate all Massachusetts public higher education institutions and their programs.
Additional Subject Areas: Broaden coverage to include more disciplines relevant to emerging workforce needs.
Enhanced Features for Users
Skill and Interest Assessments: Provide tools for students to identify career paths based on their strengths and aspirations.
Interactive Features: Add checkboxes and annotations to course and career recommendations for easier tracking.
Guardrails for Cost Control: Implement safeguards to prevent misuse and optimize operational expenses.
Improved Evaluation Tools
System Prompt Testing: Enable administrators to simulate changes in system prompts and measure their impact on chatbot performance.
Automated Test Cases: Configure test cases to automatically evaluate the tool after any updates to knowledge or system prompts.
Why MATCH Matters
MATCH addresses critical gaps in college and career guidance, helping high school students navigate their educational and professional futures. By reducing barriers like language, disconnected resources, and confusing processes, MATCH ensures:
More students can confidently apply for higher education opportunities.
Guidance is equitable and inclusive, reaching underserved and ESL communities.
Massachusetts builds a skilled workforce aligned with high-demand industries like life sciences, climate technology, and applied AI.
MATCH has the potential to secure over $12 million annually in federal Pell Grants and bolster the state’s competitiveness for workforce development funding. More importantly, it transforms the student experience, turning confusion into clarity and ambition into achievement.