How can we reduce stress for job seekers?
Timeline:
November 2022-February 2023
My Role:
UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher
Problem:
Searching for and applying to jobs is an incredibly stressful, complicated and manual process.
How do we guide job seekers through the job search and application process, standardize job descriptions, organize pending applications, and narrow search results so that all types of job seekers feel welcomed and achieve success through the use of our platform?
Solution:
Automated processes for filling out applications
Allows users to quickly and accurately fill out applications.
Organizational resources
Allows users to track the progress of pending applications.
Save job posts to apply at a later date.
Accurate and detailed job descriptions
All needed information is present when a user opens a job post.
Users have a full understanding of requirements and responsibilities.
Research:
I started first with secondary research focused around understanding the current job market and how people are currently trying to find jobs.
Following my secondary research, I conducted a series of interviews to gain a better understanding of my target users behaviors, pain points, needs and goals. I wanted to ask them questions about their career journey, previous experiences with online job searching, and how they’ve applied to jobs.
Tell me about a time where you ran into some roadblocks during a job search.
Tell me about a time you had great success during a job search
Tell me how your last experience specifically with online job search engines.
What features did you find helpful?
What features do you feel like were missing?
Tell me about how you feel about some of the job postings you’ve seen on these platforms.
Synthesis:
It was time for me to synthesize the research I’ve gathered and begin bringing this idea to life. I needed to take this data and the conversations I had and restructure them into handful of actionable insights. In order to to this, I created an Empathy Map and three unique audience personas.
Redefine the problem:
After concluding the research phase, it became evident that I needed to refine the problem to better reflect the needs and preferences expressed through my user interviews and synthesizing exercises.
My new goal was to provide solutions to the following questions:
User flows:
Once I had redefined the problem, it was time to map out the user flows to get an idea of the user journey’s required for the minimal viable product (MVP). I determined that MVP functionality included Create Profile, View Profile, Search for a Job, Apply to Job, View Pending Applications, and View Saved Jobs.
Design:
This is where the fun begins.
After I decided on the app’s features, red routes, information architecture, and user flows, I began sketching, wireframing, and designing the interface that will eventually turn into an interactive prototype.
I started first with paper sketches. I then used Figma to transfer my sketches to low fidelity wireframes.
Below are a few of my red route user flows represented as wireframes.
Search for a job:
Apply to job:
Create an account:
View Pending and Saved jobs:
Style guide
High fidelity screens
The final product.
Usability testing
In order to gain feedback on my designs and overall user experience of my application, I conducted two rounds of usability tests.
Each round, I ran 5 participants through my red route flows, asking them questions and gathering feedback as they landed on each screen.
This stage of my design process turned out to be one of the most valuable things I did. Throughout my design process, there were small details that I was overlooking that needed a new set of eyes to discover.
Insight 1: Consistency
Edge-to-edge design, overall consistency around buttons and form fields, and incorporating more of my brand green will help the user understand navigate through screens and understand what’s most important.
Insight 2: Hierarchy
Make sure that the most important information is present to the user when they open a job post. Also always have the “Apply” CTA button available without having to scroll.
Insight 2: Details
Adding some additional design elements to the salary slider will help users better understand its purpose and effectively narrow down their search results.
Learnings
In the end, I am proud and confident that the Employme prototype successfully solved the problem that I identified at the beginning of this project. Identifying this problem and creating this application from the ground up was an incredible learning experience.
Employme’s simplicity, automated processes, and career guidance features will ease the stress of job seekers and will help get people on the right track to achieving their career goals.
Throughout this process, I learned many things about the research and design process that go into creating an application.
Design, Test, Learn, Grow
The usability tests that I conducted really proved their value in their ability to confirm that the solutions I came up with solved the problems identified at the research stage. If you’re ever in question of a design tweak you make, take it to testing. Once the test is completed, learn from your discussions, then grow/improve your design from there.
Be open to inspiration
You never know where you may draw inspiration from. I found myself browsing through other applications with great UX in different industries to inspire and motivate my designs.
I also found that looking through non-digital mediums like print and billboards were a great source of inspiration when it came to text layout and imagery.
Trust the process
As I was going through this journey, there were times where I did not fully understand how each step connected to the next.
Looking back, I can now see the full picture and understand the importance of each stage and how we went from research, to synthesizing, to more research, to user flows, to personas, to wireframes, to high fidelity, to testing, and every step in between.