Unstuck
Helping burned-out employees see which parts of their job can still change
Lots of people are good at jobs they no longer want. Many stay for years because they can't tell whether the job can get better, and they're too drained to find out.
In my survey of 26 people, 18 of the 20 who were skilled at a job they no longer wanted stayed for a year or more. In 5 interviews, nobody got unstuck on their own. A friend's tip, a therapist or a breaking point had to move them first.
As the sole designer, I took Unstuck through 2 pivots, then designed and built a working app that turns a person's own work week into a clear picture of what to change first. In round 1 of testing, all 3 testers found their own biggest gap without being prompted.
Role
UX Designer
Context
Designlab UX Academy capstone
Industry
Career Wellbeing
Year
2026
2 pivots before the real problem
Unstuck started as an app to help people decide which phone apps to delete. Interviews showed people weren't bothered by storage. They were bothered by the noise. Also, iPhones don't share the app usage data the idea depended on, and 4 of my 5 participants used iPhones. So I dropped it.
The second idea, called Signal, would show people their strengths and suggest other jobs where those strengths could transfer. My mentor pointed out that Signal is already a popular messaging app and suggested the name Unstuck. Research then changed the idea itself.
People only trust what they figure out themselves
I interviewed 5 people, surveyed 26 more and built 3 personas from what I heard:
• Marcus, the stayer: "They say I'm good with customers. I don't see it."
• Andre, the depleted one: "When I had a job I was too tired to search."
• Nicole, the blocked one: "I really love my job, but my boss makes it very unbearable."
When someone else named a person's strength, they usually brushed it off. An app that names strengths would have the same problem. So I moved Unstuck away from finding the next job and toward checking whether the current one can change first.
Along the way, I explored and dropped 3 ideas for being too complex for this project: a digital sand tray for arranging your ideal workday, an exercise for naming your fears about switching jobs, and a venting session that AI would analyze.
The gap other tools left open
I tested 5 tools: Teal, CareerExplorer, Claude, Jenova and APT. Teal assumes you already know the job you want. CareerExplorer takes 100+ questions and returns over a thousand matches. Claude and Jenova can give good advice, but only if you know what to ask. APT came closest, but its gentle chat leads into a paywall. None of them was built for someone who shows up drained.
4 decisions that shaped Unstuck
1. Start with last week, not "What are your strengths?" Asked directly, people gave thin answers. Real work moments got detail. So the session asks, "What took up your time at work last week?"
2. Compare effort with how much the company relies on each task. These are 2 separate exercises, and the gap between them shows where to start.
3. AI never tells people what to do with their career. It builds the list and offers ideas for next steps, but people reach their own conclusions.
4. Build a working app instead of a clickable prototype. Testers could talk through their real work week, which got more honest reactions.
It starts with a real work week
Effort is its own exercise
AI builds the list from what people said
AI offers ideas and people choose
Round 1 showed the idea worked but the words didn't
Round 1 had 3 people: a product manager, a software quality lead and a customer success manager covering a region alone after team cuts. All 3 found their biggest gap, and 2 said something about their week out loud they hadn't said before. The results screen got the strongest reaction every time.
• "Energy" was read as something work gives you, so I renamed it effort
• Voice input failed silently on a company laptop, so the app now says when it can't hear and offers typing
• One person never mentioned onboarding a new teammate because she didn't think of it as her job, so the app now asks about work that was never assigned
• One person said she'd never show her manager self-reported numbers, which led to an FAQ on where the numbers come from
• Some work can't change right now, so people can put it on hold instead of failing a step
Round 2 checked the fixes and found what comes next
The same 3 testers came back and 2 new people joined.
• All 5 read effort the way the app means it, so the rename worked
• People understood the widest gap quickly, though 2 wanted it explained on the screen instead of behind an info icon
• 2 of 5 missed the list of their earlier answers at first, so I added a line pointing to it and removed the fade that hid the last item
• 2 of 5 felt some work mattered more to their boss or team than to the company, so the impact screen now asks which one the company would miss most if it stopped
• No one had a good way to handle work they can't change. 2 said they'd write "Nothing can be done" as a step, which led to the "Can't change right now" option
• One tester wanted to pick more than one suggestion, so people can now choose as many as they like
• 2 said seeing progress on Home would bring them back, which led to the Progress screen
Before: biggest impact on the whole company
After: what the company would miss most
Before: the gap was behind an info icon
After: the gap is explained on screen
Before: every item needed a step
After: work that can't change goes on hold
Before: one suggestion at a time
After: pick as many as you like
What I learned and what's next
One word can change how people read a whole app. "Energy" made sense to me and meant something else to my testers. Building a working app also changed how I tested. People talked through their own week instead of a made-up one, so their reactions were honest.
Next, I would:
• Run a month-long diary study to see if people come back and if their effort ratings actually drop
• Test with people outside office jobs, like hourly or frontline workers
• Work out a clear business model, since my mentor asked how Unstuck would make money
• Explore a path for people like Nicole, whose boss is the problem, such as the advocacy service my mentor suggested
• Check session by session whether the AI's list matches what people said