Home2Work

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Inspiration

Our inspiration for this project comes from the many hundreds of hours that parents spend running households—work that often goes underappreciated because it doesn’t come with a paycheck. Managing a home requires budgeting, scheduling, logistics, negotiation, problem-solving, and coordination across multiple responsibilities. We wanted to create an application that recognizes these valuable skills and helps people translate them into confidence and opportunities in the workforce.

What it does

Home2Work helps people turn everyday household experience into real career pathways.

Users can:

Describe their experience managing a household through a guided survey or voice input
Identify transferable skills such as organization, budgeting, communication, and coordination
Receive personalized job path recommendations based on their skills, interests, and constraints (schedule, location, pay needs)
Explore training resources to fill skill gaps
Save and manage chosen job paths in a personal dashboard

The goal is to move users from “I don’t have experience” to “I already have valuable skills—and here’s where they apply.”

How we built it

We built Home2Work as a full-stack web application using:

Next.js (App Router) for the frontend and routing
TypeScript for type safety
Tailwind CSS for a responsive, glass-style UI
Figma for detailed wireframing and design iteration
React Context providers to manage survey responses and saved job paths
A rule-based recommendation engine that matches user skills and constraints to job categories
Speech recognition (Web Speech API) to allow users to describe their experience verbally
Clerk Authentication for user accounts and saved progress

The architecture was designed so the current JSON-based job data can later be replaced by a database or external API.

Challenges we ran into

We struggled with finding a concrete way to showcase the value of household labor. Translating informal, life-based experience into structured, job-relevant skills required careful design.

Additional challenges included:

Designing a recommendation system that feels personalized while remaining transparent and explainable
Balancing simplicity for users with meaningful career guidance
Handling browser compatibility and TypeScript issues for speech recognition
Creating a polished, cohesive UI under time constraints

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the quality and consistency of the user interface. It stemmed from hours spent wireframing in Figma, searching for the right assets, fonts, color palettes, and layouts.

We’re also proud that:

The experience feels supportive and confidence-building rather than overwhelming
The recommendation system provides clear reasoning for each suggested job path
Users can move from survey to actionable next steps in just a few minutes
The architecture is scalable for future database, AI, and job-listing integrations

What we learned

Through this project, we learned:

How to design technology around real human confidence and identity challenges, not just technical problems
The importance of transparency and explainability in recommendation systems
How to structure a scalable Next.js application using providers and modular components
Practical lessons in authentication, internationalization, and deployment
How thoughtful UX decisions (language, layout, flow) can significantly impact user trust and engagement

What's next for Home2Work

Next, we plan to expand Home2Work into a more powerful career transition platform:

Integrate a database of real job listings and training programs
Use AI/LLM models to better interpret user experience and generate personalized career insights
Provide resume and cover letter generation based on household experience
Add progress tracking and personalized skill-building plans
Partner with workforce organizations and training providers
Expand language support and accessibility features

Our long-term goal is to make Home2Work a trusted tool for anyone re-entering the workforce and to help redefine how nontraditional experience is valued in professional settings.