RESEARCH

User Interviews with Job-Seekers

To better understand our users' pain points, we contacted many wiseful users who had not yet scheduled a call. Ten of those job-seekers were willing to speak with us and share insights into their experience with the platform. The conversations we had with them helped us discover why users weren’t signing up for a call and how we could improve the job-seeker + insider relationship.

Key Insights from Affinity Mapping

• Didn’t schedule a call because it was unclear to users what they were paying for.

• Users wanted more details on the insiders, such as interests and what they offer, in order to see the value of these calls.

• Want to bond over shared experiences with the insiders.

• Users wanted to establish a greater connection with insiders.

• Want something more than a “match-making” platform.

• Users want the insiders to provide them with more direction throughout their job hunt.

User Interviews with Insiders

After speaking with current users of the wiseful platform, we thought it would also be beneficial to speak to insiders so we could fully understand what a call was like from the other side. The goal was to gain insights into how the calls are run, what is covered in the calls, and any pain points the insiders experience when setting up, planning, or conducting calls with users. Additionally, we wanted to figure out what level of effort/personalization insiders would be willing to put into developing their profiles as we found this was important to job-seekers.

The Problem

Our users came to wiseful with the hope of meeting professionals in their field and ultimately landing a job. However, there seemed to be a lack of trust in the insiders and uncertainty into what they could actually offer our users. We needed to build up this trust between job-seeker and insider so that users would see the value of purchasing + scheduling 1:1 calls.

How Might We…

DESIGN

Hand Sketches | Design Studio

We began the design process with a flexible design studio, meaning we each sketched out as many ideas as possible for the look and layout of three key screens - job-seeker dashboard, insider profile cards, and the scheduling a call module. This was a critical first step in fleshing out our ideas and improving upon the best layouts before heading into the digital space.

Digital Wireframes

We gave each other feedback and decided on the layout and features we wanted to create, which meant it was time to go digital. Because we all had various schedules and other time commitments, I set up a Figma file so we could design screens on our own time and leave comments on each other's work. My primary focus was on the job-seeker dashboard, insider profile cards, and the scheduling a call module.

Once we felt confident in our design and process, we walked Reno through our designs for feedback and comments. This was an iterative process where we would take in Reno’s feedback and go back to our Figma file to make updates or improvements over the last two weeks of the internship. It’s important to note that during the design process we had to pivot and constantly iterate to make sure we weren’t just meeting our users’ needs, but also the business goals laid out by Reno.

Final Screens

Lessons Learned

Working with a small team is challenging enough during a pandemic and in a remote environment. On top of that, each teammate was in a completely different time zone, so we had to be flexible when we met. This also meant communication over Slack became that much more important. I personally juggled a strenuous workload that included a freelance UX Designer gig and Instructional Associate job through General Assembly on top of the intern work I was producing for wiseful. It was a true test to my time management and organization skills and looking back, I feel I’ve refined these even more.