Strategy
1. Opportunity Mapping
Journey Mapping Progress + Next Steps Presentation Deck (prepared for and shared with fellow UX team members)
Top Brainstorm Ideas Presentation Deck (prepared for and shared with product team and senior leadership)
2. EMAIL (RE)DESIGNS
One of the major areas of the business that I worked on while at CareerBuilder was email strategy and design. Even though our email conversion rates exceeded industry standards, the email experience was terribly broken. We consistently received negative feedback from users regarding technological issues (ex. users would unsubscribe, but they would continue to get emails), but there were also some pretty obvious design issues that were not responding to user needs (ex. receiving too many emails, receiving irrelevant emails, inconsistent/disconnected language and messaging, etc.).
Heuristic evaluation
I combed through a lot of our research around some of our key job seeker emails to see if I could pinpoint some areas for improvement. I also conducted a heuristic evaluation, user flow analysis, and competitive analysis. I then put together a list of next steps for improving this segment of the job seeker emails to serve as a reference and jumping off point for future design improvements.
Later on, I used these findings to make UX recommendations and inform some design decisions regarding emails as CareerBuilder worked to redefine their brand architecture strategy. As CareerBuilder acquired more companies, there was an increased need for the business to A) maintain clear communication with all customers and users of the products and B) reinforce the brand values, look, and feel across all products. Part of this undertaking included the rethinking the design of emails.
Concepts created by marketing team
The marketing team created some initial designs and shared them with the Email Team (of which I was a team member) and other key decision makers. I reviewed the designs, made note of UX-related concerns, and provided some actionable recommendations.
My list of assumptions, UX concerns, and recommendations.
Based on these recommendations, I wireframed some additional design concepts, and created quick mockups so that we could consider some alternatives.
Email wireframes
My email mockups
Outcome
Unsurprisingly, these designs (and my recommendations) were tabled and eventually overruled. There wasn't a clear understanding of who had ownership over these emails and who ultimately should have ownership over these emails. I also don't think that we (marketing and UX) were able to effectively collaborate so that we could make the best decisions to benefit our job seekers, our employers, and the business.
I would have liked to see more effort and care dedicated to this area of the business, especially considering email messaging was our primary form of communication. It would have been great to do some research on the effectiveness of our communication strategies and our brand perception across CareerBuilder as a whole. In fact, I proposed this, but I left the organization before things could really get under way.
B2B (Employer)
3. SUPPLY & DEMAND export pagE
Talentstream Supply & Demand’s web portal delivers recruitment analytics and insights into both job seekers and market competitors to help employers recruit more effectively in today’s marketplace.
I designed the S&D export page, which is a high-level overview of analytics data that offers actionable insights on job seekers and competitors. I went through several iterations, and worked closely with the user researcher assigned to this product to ensure that the most pertinent information was being presented.
Various iterations
Each concept was roughly evaluated with a "blur" test. I also printed each design off in grayscale to ensure that the correct sense of hierarchy was still conveyed, both digitally and in print.
Eventually, a few concepts were chosen to be tested with our users.
4. COMPANY Pages
Previously conducted research revealed that a few key job seeker personas place a great deal of importance on learning specific details about companies before they apply to them.
We found that this is partly due to the fact that job seekers want to determine if they align with a company's culture and values, but we also learned that an uncomfortable number of job seekers have fallen victim to scams from companies that they find on job boards.
One solution would have been to identify these companies that post jobs on our job board, and prevent them from posting, but the needs of the business disallowed this option. Instead, we instead decided to design and test the concept of Company Pages.
Company Pages are pages within CareerBuilder.com that contain information about companies that we determined job seekers cared about, such as company history, open positions within that company, employee perception, financial information, and content related to company culture.
We held a moderated, in-person testing session with a total of 5 participants. Our goals for the session were to understand:
1. How job seekers currently conduct company-related research within the context of their job search.
2. What content on Company Pages is most valuable to job seekers.
3. The perception of different page layouts and formats, including expanded page vs. modal.
4. How, when, and why job seekers use Company Pages in their job search.
Each participant was shown these three designs for the Company Pages:
Below are some of our key takeaways, and a few highlights from the session:
Company reviews: Make company reviews more prominent on the page or visible without requiring user to scroll down.
Company overview and culture: Image/Video layout from Version 1 was preferred for it’s simplicity. Image/Video layout from Version 2 attracted some users due to it being current. However, both need to ensure content is valuable and clear. Users are hesitant to “click” or spend time watching videos if they’re not sure what they’re about to see.
Consider ways to make content under “Overview” and “Culture” more engaging and easy-to-digest. As it is, content is too small and most users skipped over it or were reluctant to “drop down” to read more.
"Trustworthiness" badge: Verified green check mark is valuable and helps users trust a company, but not everyone understood what it meant. Explore ways to make this more explicit.
Company jobs: Make it clear what jobs are being shown -- are they related jobs, or jobs from that company?
Social media: Facebook and Twitter was valuable to participants who used it for job searching, but was considered distracting or unnecessary for those who didn’t. Explore ways to provide this information that is useful for those who want it, but minimal for those who don’t care about it.
Page layouts: The modal could use further testing to better understand user preferences. From our initial testing, it was considered faster than opening in a new window, however, it should still accommodate those who prefer to open new tabs while they research so they can compare multiple companies at a time, or review them later.
Findings from Company Page 1
Outcome
Based on these findings, I made some revisions and prepped the designs for further testing. Unfortunately, the needs of the business changed, and this project was put on hold indefinitely.
Nonetheless, because this was largely conceptual work, I was able to get some great experience in information architecture and interaction design. Also, because I heavily relied on and referenced our personas when I was generating concepts, I was able to show how personas can be used to inform design decisions.
B2C (Job seeker)
5. mobile app
The ultimate goal of the CareerBuilder Job Seeker app is to connect the right job seeker with the right job. Together with a senior interaction designer and the rest of the Consumer Mobile Apps Team, I worked to design and launch an MVP by the end of Q4 2016. The most positive result of that was the empty state illustration that I designed resulted in a 92% increase in resume uploads, which was a primary KPI for the quarter.
Empty state concepts
Final empty state design
I worked on visual design updates, illustrations, copywriting, and icons for both Android and iOS, and I also led whiteboarding and brainstorming sessions with the developers.
Design concepts with annotations: The purpose of the annotations is to A) quickly explain design rationales and show how they relate to back to user research and/or industry standards, and B) highlight any concerns or unanswered questions.
Screens from the iOS app
Screens from the Android app
RESULT
As stated, the introduction of the aforementioned empty state resulted in a 92% increase in resume uploads for Q4 2016. Yippee!! That was a big personal win, and a big win for the UX team.
I absolutely loved working with this development team, and would welcome any opportunity to work with them again in the future. I also worked alongside an amazing senior designer who taught me some great strategies for incorporating better process into your product teams, and increasing collaboration and communication with your developers.
6. Mobile App Update Email
I designed an email to announce new feature updates for the mobile app. Based on some recently conducted user research, we knew that these upcoming features would be particularly appealing to our active job seekers.
I created several different concepts for the email. I wrote copy and created spot illustrations in order increase our "friendly factor" and help close the gap between us and our users.
OUTCOME
As far as I know, a couple of these emails did go out, but I have no idea how they performed. 😢