African Union
Adding features for the African union career website provides pathways for people to have more interactive and easy access to their job searching experience.
Roles: User Research| Information Architecture| UX|UI design| Prototype| Testing
Tools: Sketch| InVision| Jira
The Challenge
The AU career website needs to have an improvement in usability, visual design, and easy accessibility for users to have job search, upcoming job openings, and adding features for potential job seekers to have a pleasant experience in their next career opportunity with African Union.
The Solution
Since this will be an app for a job search, adding features for users to have an easy job search, finding information about any job within the Au organization, and being able to have a quick status check after the application process is complete and before leaving the site.
EMPATHIZE
Market Research |Competitive Analysis |1:1 Interviews
Research Findings
Market Research
I want to find out what the strengths and weaknesses are for existing Intergovernmental organization job application process on their websites and did my research to find out statistics and market strategies, on what makes a good IGO website to a potential job seeker.
NGO JOb Industry Statistics
The research finding suggests all competitors focus on improving the world and seek users who follow their mission. It also has the top five sources for Where do hires come from? and Which source is used most for job searching and recruiting? as followed
○ Career Sites - 27.35%
○ Job Boards - 18.76%
○ Referrals - 15.83%
○ Internal Hire - 15.25%
○ Agency - 4.52%
The most effective talent branding tools are company websites (68%), online professional networks (i.e., LinkedIn), and social media (i.e., Facebook, Twitter).
https://zety.com/blog/hr-statistics#job-search-statistics
https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/talent-solutions/global/en_us/c/pdfs/Ultimate-List-of-Hiring-Stats-v02.04.pdf
Competitive Analysis
After researching many different websites/apps I decided to use 3 organizations that have a similar targeted audience, a requirement for job/ volunteer work-seekers. Through this analysis, I learn what features are common in such organizations, and going forward the AU career app needs to have features that give easy manual guidance for applicants, user-friendly job search, and quick application updates.
Primary Research
1:1 Interview
Based on the research and targeted users I conducted 3 in-person and 2 remote interviews with people who have used an Intergovernmental Organization website to find a job. Tried to include different people from different career background and age group. I prepared case study questions and reached out via email, phone, and zoom. View Interview
DEFINE
Personas | Empathy Maps |POV + HMW
Personas
I synthesized the information I gathered that represents the ideal targeted users, their needs, goals, and pain point to created user personas which helped me identify users' similarities and have a better understanding of my findings.
Empathy Maps
I looked over the personals, thought about their decision-making in their day-to-day life choices and motivation, and created an empathy map for each.
POV+HMW
Based on the primary research I came up with a point of view statement for our users. This will help to create HOW MIGHT WE questions to identify users' problems and help brainstorm for a possible solution.
IDEATE
Feature Roadmap | Sitemap | Task Flow| User Flow
Feature Roadmap
I looked over the interview questions, persona, and empathy map to create a road map
Sitemap
I looked over other NGO sites to understand their layout and created a sitemap that will represent the information architecture.
Task Flow
After finishing the sitemap, I created a task flow where users likely will have common flows and how they view the site.
User Flow
The user flow helped me see different ways a user can interact with the site and process of user’s decision making which will help me identify and focus on my design process
Wireframes | Branding| Style Tile| Hi-Fi Design | UI Kit
DESIGN
Sketchs
By using the Mid-fidelity wireframes, I created a mobile prototype to get usability data from the possible targeted audiences. I made the focus to be on the key added features in the navigation processes and gave a specific scenario to the 5 participants' usability tests to explore the app and see the interaction.
Then created a style tile, based on AU's current design to ensure it meets the standard value and mission of the organization. It will help me to come to decisions about the look and feel for visual design and to references.
Style Tile
I added what I thought is important for AU to represent by applying the color palette, fonts, images, and icons to the wireframes and see the visual representation of the site then applied.
High Fidelity Design
UI KIT
I organized and matched all of the individual elements from my prototype to create the UI KIT so that other designers, and developers know each element and its purpose.
TEST
Prototype | Usability Testing | Affinity Map
I Prototype to give a sense of what the users' experience could be as a final product using InVision. Set up a prototype on my laptop and see the 5 participants walk through the screens and have a Q&A over the phone Have a video conference call via Zoom/Skype, send a recorded prototype link in advance, and walk through the prototype.
Prototype
Usability Test Findings
The test results showed that all users were able to accomplish the tasks, but had some troubles with few design details that were resolved in the iterations. View all findings.
Affinity Map
I created an affinity map to better understand my observation and visualize my findings from usability tests, following users’ feedbacks helped me to identity arrays in a way that will support my recommendation in decision making.
Iteration
I improved the high-fidelity frames by changing the landing page text color to black, and the navigation button for job search to say “Explore Role " instead of “See All", Also changed the icon for country search by removing the icon flag and just put the language “English” instead of adding the “flag”.
Conclusion
Thought this is the app I often visited, as a designer, I had to take a step to familiarize myself with the current apps design system to incorporate features, though adding a new feature onto an already existing app has its own challenges being mindful of its current layout was important. I cannot stress enough how important research and usability tastings are in letting us explore ways to solve the problems. This research helped me to know what to focus on defining the problems and come to a solution.
Thank you for reading