Bridgit - early career growth startup
Guide students to the ideal job through journaling and AI coaching
Bridgit is a journaling and AI coaching tool that helps college students turn reflection into confident career action. I served as the sole designer on a startup team within a Northwestern venture group, leading the design from concept through MVP. The product is currently in testing and scheduled to launch this fall.
Time
May - July, 2025
Collaborator
Junmo Kwon
Guillermo Ramirez Carmona
Mohini Narasimhan
Problem
The pressures college students carry today…
Rising Pressure, Shrinking Support
Entry-level jobs are disappearing, recruiting starts earlier, and AI is reshaping the market before students graduate. With a college advisor-to-student ratio of 1 to 1,800 in the U.S., personalized and sufficient guidance remains a significant unmet need.
Missed Chances to Grow
Most career tools push students to act fast: polish the resume, automate application filling. Few help students build confidence, reflect on growth, or connect their story to their next step.
Challenge
Not just transactional aid
Students need space to reflect, build confidence, and connect their personal growth to career direction. How might we create support that nurtures self-development and helps students to build confidence through continuous, growth-oriented guidance?
Solution
Coaching and Journaling as the path to clarity
Bridgit, a journaling-first career platform
that helps students track personal growth, connect it to career strengths, and access timely AI-powered coaching throughout the college life.
Guided Exploration with AI
Bridgit uses journal entries, resume, and job goals to recommend next steps and industries worth exploring.
Note-taking Anytime, Anywhere
Students can log thoughts, track progress, or record ideas on the go. The mobile-friendly interface mirrors the desktop experience, allowing rich inputs like links, media, and voice memos.
AI Interview Coach, Built Around You
Voice-based coaching adapts to each student’s background and job openings to help them prep smarter and build confidence that feels real.
Journals Synced Across Devices
All entries sync automatically. Journals surface mindset shifts, track milestones, and fuel tailored AI nudges.
Counselor Dashboard to Scale Support
Advisors access dashboards that track student engagement, flag struggles, and show growth trends to support timely outreach and reporting.
Research
Identifying gaps in early career support
Before designing solutions, I reviewed plenty of career tools students use nowadays. I found that most of them focus on speeding up job applications or polishing resumes, but few support ongoing personal growth. This gap in structured reflection tied to career progress became our starting point.
performative networking tool, overwhelming for beginners
Handshake
school-linked job board, lacks personal growth tools
Vmock / Simplify
resume polishing/application autofill, only on output speed
Notion
track goals and progress, not designed for career growth
Building on the gaps we identified in competitor analysis, we conducted 15 interviews to understand why students feel unprepared and unsupported in their career journeys and to confirm whether this opportunity area was worth pursuing. These themes emerged from these conversations:
Our research leads to 2 main emerging patterns:
1. Too Many Tools, Too Little Clarity
Students juggled multiple platforms without a clear starting point or way to measure progress. LinkedIn and Handshake felt performative rather than supportive, especially for those without defined career paths (non-STEM students).
“Everyone else seems to know what they’re doing. I’m just clicking around hoping something sticks.”
2. Drop-Off after the First Step
Even motivated students lost momentum after creating a resume or attending events. Without feedback or a sense of progress, they rarely revisited what they started.
“I made a resume once for class, but I haven’t opened it since.”
Brainstorm
Journaling + AI coaching emerged as the most valuable features
To address these pain points, I brainstormed concepts ranging from peer testimonial walls to AI-assisted project reflection tools. We then showed these ideas to college students across the U.S to evaluate their value through a range of activities:
After testing ideas with students across the U.S., AI-powered coaching and company research proved most valuable for building confidence. Journaling emerged as the key enabler, providing personal data that made AI support relevant and tailored. Unlike resume tools, it embraces emotion, uncertainty, and nonlinear growth, giving students ownership of their journey. In our pilot, 83% said journaling made career decisions feel more grounded and self-driven.
Bridgit meets students from day one, turning early curiosity into long-term confidence:
Design Exploration
Crafting an intuitive flow
With journaling at the core, the next step was to define how key interactions should work so the experience feels focused, accessible, and easy to navigate from day one.
1st: Home screen layout
The home screen needed to balance giving users a clear next action while keeping other tools easy to access.
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A: AI chat home screen
B: Weekly progress dashboard
C: Journal first
2nd: Journal Easy Retrieval
Users wanted to easily revisit past reflections to see their growth.
A: AI chat home screen
B: Tagging system for themes
C: Folder sorting
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Branding
Conveying optimism through design
With the core interactions in place, I shaped the visual identity. Inspired by the idea of a bright future and open skies ahead, Bridgit’s branding conveys calm, optimism, and guidance toward what’s next.
Learning
Looking back…
Pitch deck reviews
Shaping how our product was positioned to investors as well as the market sharpened my ability to communicate design value in business terms.
Go-to-market brainstorms
Collaborating on launch plans taught me to consider design not just as usability, but as conversion, trust, and first impressions.
Working with non-design stakeholders
Navigating feedback from founders and engineers taught me how to defend design decisions while staying flexible and outcome-driven.
Appreciate the Scroll