A User Experience Designer
Workpool
Project Overview
Workpool is a job board website to be developed by the city of Kingston that will serve as a compilation of jobs posted on various job search platforms like Indeed and some local job board platforms similar to Keys, which are specific to Kingston.
Workpool provides passive job seekers with easy access to the job market along with various tools to refine and control their search results and a user interface that is easy to use, without having to visit multiple job board websites.
My primary role was to facilitate a team of 3, including myself, Veronica Dogbegah and Tanner Rowbotham. I was involved in each step of the research phase and the usability tests and defined the design elements and style of the website.
Problem Statement
Project Goals
Our team was required to explore and understand the experience of passive job seekers, identify design issues with the Workforce Windsor Essex website and propose design recommendations as well as a prototype for the new website to be built for the City of Kingston. The team was also expected to suggest possible names for the site (Workpool is a title for the website that was suggested by the team).
Business Goal
The goal of the City of Kingston is to provide a single central source of information
on job opportunities in Kingston and the neighbouring areas. The City of Kingston had also purchased the WeJobs Board, WeMap Jobs and WeExplore Careers tools amongst others from the Workforce for Windsor Essex website, which it wanted to incorporate in the Workpool Website.
User Goal
The persona is a passive job seeker. A passive job seeker wants to be able to find jobs, explore other career paths and stay up to date on industry trends.
Research Methods
The research methods
1. Persona
The first step for the team was to flesh out the high-level persona that was given to us so that it made the persona more real and nuanced. To have this understanding and develop empathy for the user that we were designing for, we conducted interviews with passive job seekers who currently had jobs but were passively looking to keep track of opportunities in the market. Additionally, we also conducted an interview with a staff member of the career services department at the St. Lawrence College to get further insights about passive job seekers, as they assisted job seekers within the college daily.
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Our interview questions revolved primarily around the users' wants, needs and experiences with existing job board websites. Based on the outcome of the interviews, the team collectively developed our guiding persona profile.
Persona
We received the following insights from the interviews:
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Passive job seekers do not have a lot of time considering they already have a job and spend less time searching for jobs.
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Finding the right job by searching for job titles does not provide the desired results.
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Most job descriptions or job boards do not focus on skill sets.
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Different job boards have different navigation structures, and because a passive job seeker uses various sites, it becomes overwhelming for job seekers to learn the user interfaces of so many different sites.
2. Heuristic Analysis
One team member additionally conducted a heuristics analysis to identify interface design challenges. Major issues identified included:
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The taxonomy of the site does not reflect users’ mental models.
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Users did not have the freedom and control with certain features.
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There were no breadcrumbs or feedback, and navigation on the site is confusing.
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Inconsistency among different tools and no flexibility in the website required users to learn how to use the website before they were able to use it efficiently.
3. User Journey Map
Using the outcome of the interviews, we also created a user journey map to layout the users' emotional state during different touchpoints in the usage of services provided by current job boards.
Customer Journey Map
4. Literature Review
To further strengthen the team's understanding of the persona, I carried out a literature review that looked at the definition, characteristics and wants of passive job seekers. I reviewed existing articles that explored ways to target passive job seekers from the point of view of employers and looked at factors that passive job seekers consider when looking for a job (or receiving job suggestions).
5. Usability Test
The team conducted usability tests with 6 passive job seekers to assess the usability of the Windsor Essex website (which was the inspiration for this project) and identified the areas of improvement. The tests also helped us understand how users interacted with the website, recognize their pain points and gauge their expectations of how the site should function.
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The following are the top insights we found from the tests:
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The site had multiple paths to complete a task, making it difficult for users to identify the right path. Participants expressed dissatisfaction about the labelling on the site and navigation. Hence, the team conducted a task analysis and card sort to define the right information architecture and reduce cognitive friction for users.
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To improve the navigation on the site, the existing information architecture of Windsor Essex Workforce was reviewed, and a new sitemap proposed.
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Feedback from participants also showed that the search on the website does not help the user quickly find information without having to go through the entire site. When a user searches for a job on the homepage, the search results are not related to the search request.
Workforce for Windsor Essex website
6. Task Analysis
After setting specific tasks derived from the tasks included in the Usability test, the team conducted a task analysis. We created a sitemap of the current state of the Windsor Essex Workforce website. This helped the team to develop a task flow diagram to complete the set tasks. Using the task flow diagram, the team was able to identify issues with navigation on the current state of the website. Along with that, we identified all problems with information architecture, labelling and visual structure of the site, specifically associated with the set tasks.
Current sitemap - Workforce for Windsor Essex
Task flow diagram
Based on the issues found in the information architecture of the Workforce for Windsor Essex from the task analysis, we created a sitemap of the proposed information architecture for the new Workpool website.
7. Card Sort
To validate the proposed information architecture, the team set up a card sort test using Optimal Workshop. This test was conducted with 5 participants. Based on the participants' responses, we refined the proposed information architecture that we had at this point. Our final sitemap from this activity formed the basis of the information architecture of our prototype.
Proposed sitemap
Design Proposal
In conjunction with the team, we created wireframes based on the feedback from the discovery sessions and had a critique session to evaluate the features and designs implemented.
Wireframes for Workpool
We further went on to create prototypes using Adobe XD.
Prototype:
Homepage
Prototype:
Job Board page
Prototype:
Job Map page
Prototype:
Career Paths page
Prototype screens
We then proceeded to validate our proposed design by conducting another usability test, this time of the prototype, with passive job seekers.
The top findings from the second usability test were:
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The prototype was well received by the participants as they expressed the ease in understanding the website and its navigation.
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Apart from some subtle visual changes, the major take-away from the usability test of the prototype was the unclear nature of the Career Paths view.
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The hierarchical layout of the career paths view with arrows was not apparent to the users.
As a result of the unclear nature of the Career Paths View, we designed the below solution.
Prototype:
Career Paths page
Updated prototype screen for Career Paths page
We parted away from a flowchart-like format to a freer-flowing format, with the selected skill shown in the largest bubble and related skills branching out of it. We also decided to remove the directional arrows as they did not serve any purpose and caused cognitive friction.
Key Learnings
Project Outcome
The results from the usability test of our prototype showed the margin of improvement from the Workforce for Windsor Essex website. There was a significant jump in the Single Ease Questions ratings (participants’ rating on how easy/difficult a task was to accomplish) and the completion rate of the tasks.
Usability test results comparison
However, the highlight was in the improvement of the System Usability Scale score, which directly measures the usability of a website. The ratings provided by users showed an improvement of 300% in the usability score.
This was clear evidence of a significant improvement in the design of the specific tools and the website in general.
Takeaways
This project was a great first opportunity to work with a client, and it helped me understand the importance of communication. The stakeholder interviews that we had with the client provided some great experience of requirements gathering, understanding business needs and client expectations.
Since this was the first time I was conducting a usability test of a design that I had a significant contribution in, it was fascinating to see how users' reactions to a minor update in design can change so drastically. The participants in the usability test of the Workforce of Windsor Essex website were confused and lost while performing some of the tasks. In contrast, when we tested our prototype, participants knew precisely how to complete a task without ever having interacted with it. This made me realize the power of design and the significance of its role in serving users.